During the colonial era cultures and laws such as the 1934 Laval Decree that governed French colonies prohibited Africans from making their own films, which has been credited as stunting the growth of film as a means of African expression, political, cultural, and artistic.[13][14][15] As Africa emerged as a postcolonial world region Africans began creating their own films and women took on more prominent roles while still being largely limited to acting roles only. Despite the apparent defeat of colonialism, however, certain conservative notions of European civilization lingered, finding an echo in a form of village traditionalism and patriarchal authoritarianism, with Kenneth W. Harrow stating that "Whereas the protests of the 1950s and 1960s were directed against European colonialists as outsiders, or against Europe itself as an outside force, now they were directed internally against African figures of authority–oppressive, domineering figures, including those who fled the nation and the economy as well as those who governed villages or families." He argued that even if the colonial overlord has been removed, the mechanisms of conquest are therefore repeated on the body of the African woman in 1960s and 1970s film.[16]