Prior to 1960, such countries as England and Belgium trained a number of Africans in the technical areas of “movie-making” through their colonial film units which produced health and educational documentaries as well as propagandist shorts praising the colonial order and/or disseminating the Christian faith. Nevertheless, little had been done to encourage native “movie-thinking.” The late Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (Benin/Senegal), one of the pioneers and early historians of African cinema, often pointed out how the French colonial authorities would refuse scholarships to aspiring African film students, arguing that priority was to be given to the training of African doctors and teachers. One could very well suspect that there also might have been some concern as to the kind of politically detrimental anti-colonialist images these film students would have later produced.