Cameroon and France / 2009 / 70mins / Documentary / French

Set in St-Leon, a modest neighborhood tucked between the cathedral and two mosques in the city of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where for 40 years, the world's famous FESPACO (Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou) showcases the best achievements of African filmmaking, Sacred Places is a film about the fight to survive and to maintain one's dignity in a hostile environment. Through the lives of three characters: Jules Cesar, the djembé maker and player, Bouba, the video-club manager of a neighborhood movie salon that also serves as a place to pray, and Abbo, a fifty year-old senior technician who decided to become a public letter writer, Teno skillfully lays out his rich, very complex and profound observations on many paradoxes of today's Africa. One of the many contradictions the director displays is the absence of African films in African distribution at a time of remarkable technological advances. The film takes on many issues, including identity in times of globalization, the state of African cinema and the complicated relationship between art, popular culture and business. Honoring African traditions of oral culture, the director allows the richness of everyday conversations to place the film's weight on the words that are at the origin of any meaningful action.

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