James Currey Reel Resistance - The Cinema of Jean-Marie Teno

Both a monograph and a critical dialogue between academic Melissa Thackway, author of Africa Shoots Back, and the Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno, this collaborative work takes the reader on a journey through Teno's multifaceted on-going filmic reflection on Cameroon and the wider African continent, its socio-political systems, history, memory and cultures. Presenting and contextualizing Teno's cinema, it addresses the notion of political commitment in art and of cinema as a form of resistance. It also considers Teno's filmmaking both in relation to the theoretical and aesthetic debates to have animated West and Central African filmmakers since the 1960s and 1970s, and in relation to documentary filmmaking practices on the continent and beyond. In so doing, the book offers an analysis of the predominant stylistic and thematic traits of Teno's work, examines the individual films and the collective oeuvre, and highlights the evolutions of his film language and concerns. It identifies and explores the committed socio-political and historical themes at play, such as violence, power, history, memory, gender, trauma and exile. It also considers Teno's unwavering focus, both thematically and in his filmmaking choices, on forms and instances of resistance, framing his cinema as a form of decolonial aesthetics. Review Reel Resistance is an exceptionally fruitful and reciprocally beneficial meeting of minds, a critical and aesthetic dialogue which is singular in tone; one in which the artist and his oeuvre continue to exist, fully and clearly, in themselves, rather that serving as pretexts and prime materials for scholarly investigation and performance of knowledge. Thackway's generous stance and critical analysis heightens the reader's grasp of the place and value of Teno's cinema in the international cultural arena, whilst Teno's bold and brilliant understanding of history and politics makes this work a must for readers, be they scholars or the general public. Reel Resistance is a treasure trove for understanding how the colonial past impacts the cultural present and future, in film and society, eliciting a wealth of creative resistance. ― AFRICINE The book makes an important contribution to the research of film history and the decolonization of Southern Africa. ― MEDIENwissenschaft The scope of their [Thackway and Teno's] exchange is extensive, while also focusing on specific aspects of image, sound, and the conceptualization of history. The tone is candid, with the kind of comfort and frankness that can exist between close intellectual friends. ― African Studies Review There are few monographs on an African filmmaker and even less on a documentary filmmaker, which is fundamentally what Jean-Marie Teno is apart from his only feature film, Clando. This more widely illustrated book therefore deserves to be a milestone. It is all the more so as it is fascinating from start to finish, summoning both the deep erudition of the academic Melissa Thackway in the first part and in the second the detailed answers provided by the filmmaker on his journey, its aspirations and its choices. It is through him a history of African cinema is being written, so much has his commitment never wavered. ― Africultures [I]t is a prime exemplar of solid scholarly research, a bona fide auteur study, not another eclectic digest or mishmash of festivalistic chatter and drawing-room speculations on African film and culture. [...] Reel Resistance is a timely addition to the growing body of critical studies of African filmmakers published over the last three decades. ― Framework The Journal of Cinema and Media About the Author MELISSA THACKWAY is a lecturer, independent researcher and translator. She currently teaches African Cinema at Sciences-Po Paris and at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO). She has published widely on film and representation in Africa and the diaspo