BFI

Interest films about the processing of goods and foodstuffs were a popular staple of the mixed programme in the late 1900s. Such films generally presented the process chronologically, from the planting of a crop or collecting of materials to the consumption of the final product by a person or its presentation for sale. This example is a straightforward set of views charting the planting, growing, harvesting and transporting of bananas from plantations in the colonies to the London shops. It is as interesting now as then, with the added value of being a century old and thus probably the earliest film record of that part of the world. The intertitles don't mention precisely where the plantation is, but we can reasonably assume it to be the West Indies. A further dimension to the film for modern audiences is as a record of colonialism: we see clearly delineated the black workers and white overseers. But this is incidental: the film itself is primarily interested in the spectacle of production, in progressive methods and in the exotic locations.

Bryony Dixon

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