User:AfyaMay

AfyaMay (talk) 19:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

The Palladium Cinema,one of the most popular theatres in Gold Coast was opened in 1925.The Palladium Cinema,was situated directly opposite the Wesley Methodist Church in Jamestown by a business man known as Alfred John Kabu Ocansey who also built the first chain of film theatres in several major cities on the Gold Coast.

Audiences paid to watch silent films which were exhibited by Ocansey using a hand cranked projector.Audiences were actively engaged during the film screenings sessions through loud reactions and commentary.They would urge the operator to crank the projector faster during a fight scene or a chase sequence Dadson,1998.Terminologies like killer and Jack also emerged.Killer was always used for the villian whilst Jack was used for the protagonist who was an intelligent and brave character. Statements like Jack yaa mutu ,Cine yaa kaare, also emerged, the Hausa language meaning If jack is dead then the film is over.Most of these statements were made by some West African immigrants in other of the communities in the Gold Coast.

Challenges/Competitors

Alfred Ocansey later employed gramophone sounds to accompany the silent films screening and by 1933 when colour films was introduced to cinema,Ocansey did not hesitate to take that opportunity to its fullest in the film exhibitions business. It is said that Ocanseys closet competitor was John Holt Bartholomew, a British Merchandising Company that used portion of its premises to show films to paying audiences. Ocansey used a gramaphone to provide sound for the silent films while Bartholomew theatre employed an organ player and provided music before the film screening. Aside these two pioneers, there were several film exhibitors who moved from one town to the other.They would hire

large walled compounds of large homesteads and charge entrance fees Nanbigne 2011.

Though Ocansey possessed the largest film theatres,thus having a monopoly of film distribution at that time. The theatre could not develop into a more structured business of film distribution in Ghana.

Irrespective of the vital roles individual business men played in commercial film distribution and exhibition,the colonialist controlled film production in the country and could reach onto a large crowd in diverse towns in the country.