Cinema, Politics and Resistance in Cameroon

Abstract

Both the colonial and post-independence eras in Cameroon have been characterized by repressive public policies regarding freedom of speech and expression, with strict surveillance on cinematographic expression. In 1934, for example, the French government passed the Laval Decree to prevent cinema from spreading “subversive” or anti-colonial messages. The decree also required the French government’s permission before shooting or showing films in French colonies. The subsequent neo-colonial state, established in 1960, worked hand in glove with the former colonial masters, and it can be argued that this neo-colonial state has survived to the present day. Within a national context characterized by dictatorship, human rights abuses, cultural belligerence/emasculation, poverty, and above all, press censorship, this paper sets out to demonstrate that filmmakers such as Alphonse Beni, Jean Marie Teno, Jean Pierre Bekolo, and Basseck Ba Khobio successfully employ several forms of militant cinema techniques and aesthetics to lend their voices to an oppressed Cameroonian and African society. While filmic approaches like the anti-documentary (Teno) and the Mevungu (Bekolo) are more overt in their deconstructionist agenda, others like “sly civility” (Beni) and “Subtle Deconstruction” (Ba Kobhio) are more veiled, in the register of what James Scott calls “hidden transcripts”. These hidden transcripts here refer to codified stylistic and narrative techniques constructed by oppressed groups as they speak against the injustice of repressive apparatuses or power structures, serving as a means to protest against hegemonic forces while evading their surveillance. From a post-colonial perspective, this paper analyses films from the aforementioned Cameroonian filmmakers, as well as existing literature on Cameroonian cinema. The objective is to shed light on how these committed filmmakers denounce neo-colonialism, dictatorship and cultural alienation on one hand, and the government’s incompetence and insensitivity to the plight of the masses on the other.