20091221
africanews

Simon Pierre Bell is a happy man who needs to catch up on a lot of lost sleep. He has initiated the very first all-documentary film festival in the Cameroon capital Yaoundé, Images En Live. A dream, five years in the making.
Cameroon film festival Bell
Images En Live showed some 50 films between December 9 and 12. The fact that Bell and his group of co-organisers paid for most of it out of their own pockets is just the first of a couple of things that have made this a unique event.

Another things was that all the organisers were young filmmakers, largely unconnected with the grand cultural circuit that usually gets run out of diplomatic posts, UN agencies and local elites. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this but this circuit has a tendency not to look beyond its own ambit and, as a result, misses out on young new initiatives. Image En Live has helped fill this gap. These young organisers have the drive, energy and desire to show the world what they can do.

Third, most of the Cameroonian documentaries were utterly refreshing. Their message to the world was simple: “Just watch our films – and for once, just keep quiet.”

Mohamed Mbouombouo filmed his own neighbourhood La Briquiterie, which has a bad reputation (undeserved if you ask me). The one was called Mon Eldorado and just showed life in “La Brique”, as everyone calls the area. The second was more hard-hitting and tackled a controversial theme: state-ordered house demolitions. AD, it was called, after the ominous two letters that appear with a big red cross on each of the homes that will fall to the wreckers. AD means: à démolir.

Babette Koultchoumi is from the north of Cameroon and she made a very well-tuned documentary about how changes in the rules of land ownership affect women. The films is called Land is Food. Alright, you have just read these previous lines and what is your gut reaction?
Come on: be honest.
Your reaction is this: “The women will surely be worse off, as usual!”

Nope. Babette Koultchoumi explained to me after the film that, in fact, the loosening up and commercialization of the land had been a very good thing for the women in her village. Some of them now made more money than their husbands. Capitalism good for women? You read it here. That is why this first Images En Live was necessary.

There were more eye-openers. Awa Traoré recounted a very personal story about adoption, a common practice in Mali, where she shot her film. We see and hear mothers who have been adopting children, children who have been adopted. Awa even goes back to her old village and talk to a griot (the singer/storyteller who is the repository of tradition), who explains why this practice exists. Yaoundé resdent Félix Mbog-Len Mapout made a very touching and personal film about his polio, which condemns him to walk on crutches for the rest of his life. He defines himself as a film director first and handicapped a distant second.

So this was the refreshing thing that all these films had in common: there was no appeal to feel pity, no obvious thick layer of moral indignation (although AD came pretty close for obvious reasons), no dogma of any kind – and certainly no identity politics (migrant, feminist or otherwise). You are the public. You’re grown up. You can think for yourself.

What an absolute delight! There will be a second Images En Live, in December next year.

More on my blog called “Yoff Tales” (http://bramposthumus.wordpress.com) and very shortly on Radio Netherlands Worldwide/Africa.