From Boer guerillas in 1909 at Durban's Electric Theatre to the Vox in wartime Tangier, inspiration for Rick's Cafe in Casablanca
The continent's first film show was in Johannesburg in South Africa in May 1896, but Durban can claim the first permanent cinema. The Electric Theatre opened in 1909 with what purported to be newsreel of the Boer war, with scenes of Boer guerillas taking on the British, but in fact actors filmed on Hampstead Heath.
Kenya's Theatre Royal opened in Nairobi in 1912. It attracted the African premiere of Intolerance, DW Griffith's epic, in 1916, months after plague in the city.
Ethiopia's first cinema arrived in the 1920s with the Club de l'Union, a notorious bar and dancehall in Addis Ababa that was soon known as Saitan Bet – House of the Devil. It is still in use, part of the less poetically-named Mega Theatre complex. Eritrea's capital Asmara is a cinematic treasure; under Italian rule in the 1930s, 10 art deco cinemas, with names like the Roma and the Croce Rosse, were built within a few years. The intimate, low-key Cinema Dante was already there in 1910, the oldest in Asmara and one of the earliest in Africa.
Morocco's Vox in Tangier was Africa's biggest when it opened in 1935, with 2,000 seats and a retractable roof. As Tangier was in Spanish territory, the theatre's wartime bar heaved with spies, refugees and underworld hoods, securing its place in cinematic history as the inspiration for Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.
Ghana's petite Rex Cinema, opened in 1937, is Accra's only alternative to its brash new multiplex. Its status is indeterminate, with a visitor as likely to witness a prayer meeting or a dance as a film. Chad's government has spent £1.3m refurbishing its only cinema, the Normandy in Ndjamena, which until April had been closed for 20 years. The 1950s building is not Africa's oldest or largest theatre but does signal hope for renewal of Africa's cinematic heritage.