Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon (review)

Indigenous sub-Saharan African filmmaking began some fifty years ago. Initially studied within historical, sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, or thematic paradigms, it was analyzed later from semiotic, structuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives. A number of books and journals have treated films by Cameroonian directors, but no volume on Cameroon appeared in the country series on African cinema edited by Victor Bachy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the only book on Cameroonian cinema was Guy Jérémie Ngansop's Le cinéma camerounais en crise (1987).

Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon, edited by Alexie Tcheuyap, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, brings a timely contribution, especially on post-1980 films. The collection includes fourteen articles, most previously unpublished, by African and Western specialists in various fields.

Tcheuyap's introduction describes the precariousness of Cameroonian film production and distribution under postcolonial autocratic governments intolerant of spoken, printed or cinematic challenges. Emphasizing the lack of coherent cultural policy and infrastructure such as film schools or postproduction facilities, Tcheuyap states that "producing a film in Cameroon, as in many African countries, is still something of a miracle" (p. 2).

Films selected for inclusion were directed by Cameroonians, consider Cameroon as a category of analysis, or were filmed there. The chapters "attempt to address the aesthetic, ideological, and social problems related to images and their political significance in what is left of this rich country" (p. 4).

Opening the first section, "The State, Images and Cultural Discourses," Gilbert Doho establishes a clear delineation between two groups of Cameroonian directors:

(1) A self-censoring first generation, including Jean Pierre Dikongue-Pipa, Daniel Kamwa, and Alphonse Beni, that produced propagandistic documentaries celebrating the "father of the nation" or the prowess of soccer players, politically benign feature films on marriage and the dowry, and escapist action movies—all of which "refused to engage with burning national issues. This cinema was the site of a vicious collaboration between the state and independent filmmakers" (p. 22).

(2) A second generation—Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Bassek Ba Kobhio, Jean-Marie Teno, and others "who deliberately use the camera not only to decolonize the gaze but also to deconstruct neocolonial political monsters" (p. 29). In contrast to the older, "apolitical" or "amnesic" directors, they question the past and present, and contribute to national reconstruction.

Bole Butake explores local and cable television shows and the impact that imported Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian video, and Latin American telenovela productions have had on viewers' expectations. In the field of television, Butake foresees the success of private enterprise over government-sponsored initiatives.

In contrast to these studies, other chapters consider individual films that, for multiple reasons, are screened more often at African, European, and U.S. festivals than in Cameroon, where U.S., French, and Asian movies predominate, except for an occasional commercial success, like Kamwa's Pousse Pousse (1975). Using semiotics and postmodern Western theories, Boulou E. de B'béri provides an interesting explanation of Duala cultural connotations in Dikongue-Pipa's Muna Moto (1975). Edmond Mfaboum keenly investigates self-censorship, "social cries," and "political silences" in the early films of Kamwa and Dikongue-Pipa.

In section two, "Postcolonial (De)Constructions," Jonathan Haynes and P. Julie Papaioannou offer informative postcolonial explorations of stylistically innovative works by Bekolo: Quartier Mozart (1992) and Aristotle's Plot (1996). Alain Patrice Nganang skillfully analyzes Teno's documentaries and feature films as "essays on power and authority in postcolonial Africa" (p. 140), and Sheila Petty aptly explores Teno'suse of space and camera angle as expressive vehicles in Clando (1996). Tcheuyap presents an innovative discussion of the occult in Bekolo's Quartier Mozart and Kamwa's Le cercle des pouvoirs (1997). He concludes that Kamwa "reveals the dark side of modernity and the invisible dynamics at work in the (dis)function of the postcolonial state, a veritable witch state" (p. 190).

In the third section, "Writing Back and Theoretical Challenges," Sarah B. Buchanan convincingly demonstrates Bekolo's untraditional cinematic...