Africa, I Will See You: The Films of Jean–Marie Teno

June 21, 2005 - June 25, 2005

Head in the Clouds, June 25

Artist in Residence

Some would argue that cinema has replaced print as the modern world's way of communicating ideas, investigating place, and speaking out against ills. The films of Cameroonian director Jean–Marie Teno attest to the eloquence of the medium in this regard. Individually, his essay films might tackle polygamy (Alex's Wedding), shadow economies (Head in the Clouds), globalism in the Third World (A Trip to the Country), or how missionary zeal turned into colonial conquest (The Colonial Misunderstanding), but collectively they add up to a motion picture report from Africa, investigating its historical tragedies and analyzing its current woes. Teno links past and present through a distinctly creative junction of word and image; his camera may be trained on the disorders of modern Cameroon, but his personal narration relates the legacies behind such chaos.

In Africa, I Will Fleece You, Teno recalls Sultan Njoye, creator of Cameroon's first alphabet; for him the written word was necessary, to enable individuals "to speak without sound." Now, perhaps, with the written word rarely read (and, under Cameroon's military junta, rarely allowed to be written), the moving image is even more necessary. For Teno, the promise of film, and now video, is to enable African voices to be heard and visions to be seen. "New video technology may permit us to break the cycle of media dependency," Teno notes. "We can tell our own stories, our way, within our own means."

—Jason Sanders

We welcome Jean–Marie Teno as our artist in residence in the ongoing series Documentary Voices, programmed by PFA Film Curator Kathy Geritz. In addition to presenting a lecture on June 23, Teno will be present at screenings to engage with the audience, and will hold a workshop with students and others interested in his process.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005
7:30 p.m. Africa, I Will Fleece You
Jean-Marie Teno in Person. In his native Cameroon, Teno looks at the power of words in a society made illiterate by a hundred years of cultural genocide. Never didactic, his style is "provocative, idiosyncratic, playfully arch and sardonic."—Philadelphia Inquirer

Thursday, June 23, 2005
7:30 p.m. Chief!
Lecture by Jean–Marie Teno. A teen's near–lynching triggers Teno's investigation of the culture of thuggery—how it trickles down from dictators to husbands, "big chiefs" to little. "A brisk and focused look at a nation struggling uphill against corruption and archaic social norms."—Variety

Friday, June 24, 2005
1:30 p.m. Salon with Jean–Marie Teno (Admission Free)
At the Berkeley Art Museum Theater. Join our artist–in–residence for an informal conversation about his artistic process, designed with students in mind, but open to the public.

Friday, June 24, 2005
7:00 p.m. A Trip to the Country
Jean–Marie Teno in Person. Searching out the "specter of modernity" that haunts his country, Teno discovers a Cameroon of Coke and pasta, and a development conference where no one agrees what the word "development" means.

Friday, June 24, 2005
9:00 p.m. Clando
Jean–Marie Teno in Person. An ex–computer programmer is forced to live a clandestine life, whether as a taxi driver in Cameroon or a refugee in Germany, in Teno's fiction work. "Very courageous....One hears the voice of Africa expressing itself."—Libération

Saturday, June 25, 2005
7:00 p.m. The Colonial Misunderstanding
Jean–Marie Teno in Person. Teno's newest film is a journey through history that brings to light the complex and problematic relationship between colonization and missionary activity on the African continent.

Saturday, June 25, 2005
9:05 p.m. Head in the Clouds
Jean–Marie Teno in Person. Cameroon's endemic kleptocracy makes for a cloudy economy in Teno's documentary. With Alex's Wedding, a wedding video that turns into an at first comic, increasingly powerful drama of polygamy and submission rituals.

Documentary Voices is made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and the LEF Foundation. We wish to thank Cornelius Moore at California Newsreel and Jesse Lerner, Michael Renov, and Margarita de la Vega at The Flaherty Seminar for their assistance in making Jean–Marie Teno's residency possible.