Jean-Marie Teno's Documentary Modernity
From Millennial Anxiety to Cinematic Kinship
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2097941 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin Izzo (John Brown University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 39-53 |
| Publication date | 2015-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/asr.2015.3 |
| OpenAlex | W2120474269 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
This article examines discourses and cinematic representations of modernity in two documentary films by the Cameroonian director Jean-Marie Teno. In the first of these films,A Trip to the Country(2000), Teno investigates how ideals and aspirations of modernity as a state-sponsored project in Cameroon have their roots in the colonial period, and his film is characterized by a strong sense of anxiety linked to the turn of the millennium. In the second,Sacred Places(2009), modernity is given a different affective resonance and is linked to the pleasure of cinematic consumption in Ouagadougou as Teno situates African cinema in relation to its "brother," the djembe drum. I argue here that a shift occurs between these two films and their affective engagements with modernity; this is a transition from a sense of millennial anxiety to a thematics of what I call "cinematic kinship." I ultimately suggest that this shift allows Teno to outline new social roles for the African filmmaker as well as new relationships between African cinema and local publics
Aesthetics · Art · Kinship · Literature · Modernity · Movie theater · Pleasure · Political science · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |