The raw stock exchange: 16mm across the British Empire

“The Raw Stock Exchange: 16mm across the British Empire” explores the movement and use of 16mm film across the British Empire, from the earliest health initiatives in 1920s Africa to the work of local units in Jamaica in the 1950s. The chapter shows how, and why, 16mm became so central to the colonial project, shaping and defining the form, function, and place of film across a rapidly changing Empire. It covers multiple territories, units, and initiatives, including the Colonial Film Unit’s wartime Raw Stock Scheme, government training schools, and local mobile screenings, and situates 16mm film within a wider media infrastructure, which includes critically neglected forms such as filmstrips. Finally, in noting the movement of these 16mm films through, and beyond, Britain, the chapter unpacks their contested legacies today. Having presented 16mm colonial film as a fragmentary form, repeatedly cut up and reconstructed, the chapter calls for the continued movement and reuse of these images today as a way to confront their fractured histories.