These emerging units were often closely aligned to the ideology and established operating practices of the Colonial Film Unit. From this first production the filmmakers deviated from colonial film orthodoxy in the formal techniques that they used in addressing their African audience. This technique was based on a notion that African audiences did not possess the cognitive capabilities to understand established western film techniques such as close-ups, camera movement, cross-cutting and excessive activity within the frame.
George Noble, a veteran of the British documentary movement who joined the Unit in April , outlined this distinction between the GCFU and other colonial units. Graham used all-African casts, employed African musicians and artists and mixed both socially and professionally with local Africans.
Speaking recently, Graham rejected the suggestion that this was a colonial unit. To a large extent then, the GCFU worked independently of other colonial units and, in producing ambitious feature-length films such as The Boy Kumasenu , challenged the established conventions of colonial film.
These productions imagined a modern African identity, negotiating western and African ideals and promoting self-development and modern citizenship as an integral part of the nation-state building process.
A rhetoric of transition and development runs throughout the films, which were for the most part shown domestically by travelling mobile cinema vans and were directly related to specific government policies as part of a mass education programme. To this end, the Department of Information in Accra would hold regular Saturday morning meetings, at which departments would propose topics to film Graham noted that only a tiny proportion of these requests could be met.
