Cameroon / 1992 / 88mins / Documentary / French

Jean-Marie Teno shuffles genres to draw a complex cinematic picture of post-colonial Africa. The film is an odd pastiche of nostalgia (young Teno falls in love with the movies by watching Indian melodramas), documentary (a bit of Faux candid camera), historical footage, polemic essay, even a hilarious, yet politically searing cabaret act! Teno weaves a melancholy visual poem in which the colonizer and the formerly colonized are equally confronted. In doing so, he also creates a new form of African film, effortlessly combining document, fiction, and the expression of an original voice.

Jean-Marie Téno

Jean-Marie Téno, Africa’s preeminent documentary filmmaker, has been producing and directing films on the colonial and post-colonial history of Africa for over twenty years. Films by Jean-Marie have been honored at festivals worldwide. He has been a guest of the Flaherty Seminar, an artist in residence and has lectured at many universities. Jean-Marie was born in 1954 in Bandjoun, Cameroon. He studied audiovisual communication at the University of Valenciennes and worked as a film critic for Bwana Magazine and as editor-in-chief at France 3. In 1983, he directed his first short documentary Schubbah. In 1992, he made his documentary Africa, I Will Pluck You Clean on the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism in Cameroon. In 1996, he made Clando, which won the Audience Award at the 6th African Film Festival in Milan, Italy. Jean-Marie Teno is also a producer of his own films with Les Films du Raphia. From 2007 - 2008, he was a Visiting Artist at Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and in 2009 - 2010 he was visiting Professor at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. He lives between France, Cameroon and the United States. Learn More