Bekolo Biography
30.4.06
New York Premiere of Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes
Les Saignantes challenges cinema’s role in contemporary African society
by breaking away from political and social issue driven third world films
and pushing limits of form, content and values
(New York, NY) LES SAIGNANTES will have its New York Premiere at the 13th Annual New York African Film Festival at Walter Reade Theatre on Friday, May 28, 2006 at 7:45pm. Bekolo's wildly sci-fi influenced film puts Africa at a forefront of post-modern cinema by speaking to global youth audiences through an innovative form that mixes trash, gore, political and pop culture without losing its identity.
A nearly naked woman dangles suggestively in a harness suspended from the ceiling of a cramped room. She pirouettes, somersaults and generally taunts her audience, as a middle-aged man watches greedy for the younger woman's impossibly nubile body. A menacing air hangs over their coupling, heightened by the soundtrack's eerie score. In this hypnotic opening sequence, LES SAIGNANTES sets the stage for a genre-blending film that offers an arresting discourse on sexual politics.
Set 20 years in the future, LES SAIGNANTES follows two wannabee prostitutes on a bizarre and occasionally hilarious trek through a post-apocalyptic landscape littered with absurdly crooked politicians. Smoke rolls through the empty streets, which are cloaked in constant darkness. Aside from a few minor technological improvements, the town of Yaoundé where Majolie (Adele Ado) and Chouchou (Dorylia Calmel) hark their wares doesn't look as if any progress has been made by the year 2025, which is precisely Bekolo's point.
LES SAIGNANTES had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005. The film debuted in Bekolo's native Cameroon in March despite initial resistance from the country's censorship commission. In a recent newspaper account of Bekolo's experience with Cameroon's censorship commission, one journalist writes, "LES SAIGNANTES arrives like an electroshock in a country in search of a new future. This film proves that the art of cinema isn't limited in the type of relations it could have with power and with an audience when we are not suppressing our identity to a western context." The film's brought record numbers of Cameroonians back to movie theaters and to see the potential of their film culture.
What: NY premiere of Les Saignantes
(Cameroon, 2005, 92mm, French w/English subtitles)
Who: Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo
When: Friday, April 28 at 7:45 pm; Tuesday, May 2 at 3:00 pm
Where: Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street (bet Broadway and Amsterdam)
Plaza Level, NYC
by breaking away from political and social issue driven third world films
and pushing limits of form, content and values
(New York, NY) LES SAIGNANTES will have its New York Premiere at the 13th Annual New York African Film Festival at Walter Reade Theatre on Friday, May 28, 2006 at 7:45pm. Bekolo's wildly sci-fi influenced film puts Africa at a forefront of post-modern cinema by speaking to global youth audiences through an innovative form that mixes trash, gore, political and pop culture without losing its identity.
A nearly naked woman dangles suggestively in a harness suspended from the ceiling of a cramped room. She pirouettes, somersaults and generally taunts her audience, as a middle-aged man watches greedy for the younger woman's impossibly nubile body. A menacing air hangs over their coupling, heightened by the soundtrack's eerie score. In this hypnotic opening sequence, LES SAIGNANTES sets the stage for a genre-blending film that offers an arresting discourse on sexual politics.
Set 20 years in the future, LES SAIGNANTES follows two wannabee prostitutes on a bizarre and occasionally hilarious trek through a post-apocalyptic landscape littered with absurdly crooked politicians. Smoke rolls through the empty streets, which are cloaked in constant darkness. Aside from a few minor technological improvements, the town of Yaoundé where Majolie (Adele Ado) and Chouchou (Dorylia Calmel) hark their wares doesn't look as if any progress has been made by the year 2025, which is precisely Bekolo's point.
LES SAIGNANTES had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005. The film debuted in Bekolo's native Cameroon in March despite initial resistance from the country's censorship commission. In a recent newspaper account of Bekolo's experience with Cameroon's censorship commission, one journalist writes, "LES SAIGNANTES arrives like an electroshock in a country in search of a new future. This film proves that the art of cinema isn't limited in the type of relations it could have with power and with an audience when we are not suppressing our identity to a western context." The film's brought record numbers of Cameroonians back to movie theaters and to see the potential of their film culture.
What: NY premiere of Les Saignantes
(Cameroon, 2005, 92mm, French w/English subtitles)
Who: Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo
When: Friday, April 28 at 7:45 pm; Tuesday, May 2 at 3:00 pm
Where: Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street (bet Broadway and Amsterdam)
Plaza Level, NYC
Archives
January 2005 June 2005 July 2005 January 2006 April 2006
