Quartier Mozart

1992, Cameroon/France, directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo

Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart is one of the most challenging of contemporary African films, with a splintered narrative that recalls most obviously Djibril Diop Mambéty's 1973 film Touki-Bouki (Bekolo has cited Mambéty as his key influence amongst filmmakers from Africa), though Bekolo also draws explicitly on Cameroonian folk talkes, which are used to tell the story of the eponymous city neighbourhood. The film announces itself in terms quite different to those of most films from Africa, opening with a witty sequence in which the key characters introduce themselves direct to camera; Chien Méchant/Mad Dog (Jimmy Biyong) makes a particularly funny entrance, the camera swooping around him, the whole segment recalling the playful opening sections of Tom Tywker's (subsequent) Run Lola Run with its rapid-fire rhythm and wit.

The rest of the film doesn't consistently sustain the energy of the opening scenes, with even the attentive viewer likely to find some of the narrative progress confusing (hardly surprising, given that the film partly concerns a young girl who enters the body of a man, while the witch who assists her then assumes male form), but Bekolo cites films from all traditions - from Touki-Bouki to The Terminator - with a verve that marks him as a uniquely idiosyncratic filmmaker. He is also blessed with several extremely funny performances, including the aforementioned Jimmy Biyong and Essindi Mindja as Atango, who claims to be a Sorbonne-educated ladies' man.

Clando

1996, Cameroon/France/Germany, directed by Jean-Marie Teno

Primarily known as a documentarist - or perhaps more accurately as an essayist - Jean-Marie Teno turned to feature film with Clando, and he shows considerable confidence with the fictional medium, integrating his documentarist's eye with a story inspired by the experiences of too many Cameroonians, both in their home country and in Europe. Sobgui, a young professional, is imprisoned and tortured after being involved with the fringes of political opposition, and subsequently, having lost everything from his old life, takes up work as a 'clando', an illegal cab driver, before leaving for Germany on twin missions from his employer, who asks Sobgui to buy some cars and locate the older man's estranged son.

It's a fraught journey that quickly disabuses Sobgui of any illusions he may have had concerning Europe as an economic or social paradise, and forces him to confront the dilemmas and difficulties of the outsider, who is often driven as much by expectations back home as by any personal notivations (the meeting with the estranged son is both poignant and distressing, as we discover the reasons for his refusal to return to Cameroon). Teno's criticisms of Western intervention in Africa are couched in different terms here than in his documentary work - and lack the sometimes strident tone that can weaken his arguments - as he implicitly condemns naive European human rights workers who feel comfortable telling Sobgui how he should behave (while they are also unable to move beyond seeing him as a rather exotic representative of suffering). Teno structures the film with a series of flashbacks, peeling back the layers of Sobgui's life after he has already departed for Germany, and it's an effective strategy that allows the director to contrast the character's present and past.

Sango Malo

1990, Camerooon/Burkina Faso/France, directed by Bassek ba Kobhio

Bassek ba Kobhio's first film - from his own novel - is a critique of Cameroon's system of education that contrasts the outmoded approach of a headmaster educated in the traditional French style with the new ideas of a freshly-minted graduate of the teacher training college in Yaoundé. The film's title combines the two men's names, and by the end it's hard to avoid the implication that there's more continuity here than the younger man might like to think; he, too, imposes outside ideas without consulting the local population. The younger Malo's approach is based on the practical education philosophy of the Brazilian Paulo Freire, and he initially seems to be a breath of fresh air, challenging traditional thinking and authorities (it briefly seems as though the film might veer off to become a Cameroonian entry in the 'noble teacher' genre, before the director rights the ship). Ba Kobhio's treatment is even-handed, underlining that such (relatively) radical ideas were far from uniting all students at the training college, while he's careful to emphasize that the sometimes buffoonish headmaster has his redeeming qualities, and that he, too, has had to deal with the weight of local tradition.

Ultimately, the director is more interested in asking difficult questions of all sides in the debate rather than providing simplistic answers, though it's possible to read in the conclusion a sense that he favors a compromise between old and new, where a young teaching student uses a traditional French dictation exercise to spread knowledge of local conditions. That said, there's clearly a hint that some of Malo's ideas about social justice make sense to the faming population once they've had an opportunity to adapt such notions to their actual circumstances - and once they've been able to inject their own voices into the debate.

Afrique, je te plumerai

1993, Cameroon/France/Germany, directed by Jean-Marie Teno

After several films that addressed very specific problems in Cameroonian society (such as the availability of clean water), Jean-Marie Teno tackles a much broader canvas here, that of the post-colonial legacy - or, more accurately, the view that independence has simply brought a new form of subjugation for the population, with a new cast of characters in power. Teno uses a wide variety of visual materials, including interviews, archival materials (particularly deeply paternalistic colonial-era newsreels), broadly didactic sequences and even the occasional staged scene to assemble a multi-layered picture of the colonial legacy in his country. His film also functions as an explicit effort to restore key historical figures and achievements (particularly leaders of the anti-colonial union movement) to their correct place in the discourse, while giving a sense of contemporary forms of resistance to the state and all that implies.

Originally conceived as an examination of publishing in Cameroon, Teno widened his focus during the course of filming, and although his critique of both the colonists and those who inherited their mantle is powerful, the film does bear some of the hallmarks of a draft, particularly in its slightly awkward structure, which focuses on books and publishing until an abrupt turn towards darker material at the halfway point. This is especially distracting on first viewing the film, which grows in power with a second look.