'People in Europe need to know more about Africa,' says Jean-Marie Teno
Director Jean-Marie Teno's is anxious to put Cameroon on the screen. 'We need to tell our stories. We need to have our images existing.' His debut feature, Clando, received the first of its two screenings at the LFF last Sunday. 'It's based on the experience of a friend of mine who was arrested, violently tortured, sent to jail, and then one day liberated just like that,' he says.
Teno, who started out as a documentary maker, testifies to the influence of Ken Loach on Clando. 'I was so afraid to make fiction but through his films I thought maybe it was possible to deal with social issues in a different way. I was so fascinated by how he put real people's lives up on screen.'
Although he has lived in France since 1977, Teno still considers himself a Cameroonian filmmaker. But he acknowledges it is not always easy to make films back home. 'To shoot in Cameroon is always a big hassle because you don't have trained crews. You always have to come with some people from Europe.'
Teno's relations with the authorities in Cameroon have always been strained. 'I'm not a hero to my country unless I win prizes at international festivals,' he wryly remarks. His films struggle to find distribution either on TV or in the cinemas. He hopes Clando will be screened at a government-sponsored arts festival in December, but this is yet to be confirmed.
The situation in France is not much better. Indeed, one of his next projects is to investigate whether 'somebody can be black and French.' Exasperated at the lack of support from the French mainstream, Teno and his colleagues are trying to form their own distribution company to promote African film. 'There are so many of us working in Paris and none of us can find a distributor. We're fighting to change that. People in Europe need to know more about Africa, where these people they meet come from, what their issues are and what their problems are.' By Geoffrey Macnab
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