Coming Soon
LES SAIGNANTES
2005
Director
Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Starring
Adèle Ado
Dorylia Calmel
Emile Abossolo M'bo
Josephine Ndagnou
Runtime
97 minutes
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CAMEROONIAN FILMMAKER JEAN-PIERRE BEKOLO WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE FOR ALL 7:30 SCREENINGS IN THIS RETROSPECTIVE!
A science-fiction film and erotic thriller, LES SAIGNANTES follows two sex workers as they attempt to dispose of the corpse of one of their clients, a political leader. As usual, Jean-Pierre Bekolo mixes genres in this hybrid film, which is part female revenge film, part antisexist denunciation and part open criticism of the systemic corruption of Cameroonian politics. The director also looks to the future, placing Africa and women at the heart of a narrative in which they are usually absent, and drawing inspiration from the precolonial cultures of Cameroon's powerful Beti women's secret society to imagine Black heroines capable of fighting and healing the postcolonial state.
Journalist and critic Olivier Barlet (Africultures) describes the film as "astonishing, provocative, insolent, fun and perfectly paranoid.” With LES SAIGNANTES, Jean-Pierre Bekolo offers a future tale of a dystopian Cameroon, with burlesque outbursts and lurid lighting, mixing sex and death, as if to underline an impossibility: indeed, "How can you make a film of anticipation in a country that has no future? How can you make a detective film in a country where you can't investigate?" asks Bekolo. (Harvard Film Archive)
“Bekolo’s dismantling of rigid dichotomies and monolithic narratives of African tradition centers on contingency. His aim is not to offer viewers a ‘new’ mode of thought to substitute for the ‘old.’ Instead, he calls for us to be open to narrative and philosophical uncertainty—to a politics and thought ‘without guarantees.’ If we rely too much on fixed meanings and notions of authenticity and cultural determinism, then our thought becomes confined to what we have always known. Disrupting singular meanings turns a single code of thought into a polyvalent web of intellectual, and therefore social, potentiality. Emblematic of this polyvalent intellectual web is LES SAIGNANTES' narrative of two transgressive cyborgs who redefine notions of body and machine in their effort to subvert masculinist state power… Through their mechanized cyborg bodies, Majolie and Chouchou symbolically refuse the physical, spatial, and intellectual dominance that the masculinist state has imposed.” - Matthew Omelsky
This screening is promoted in partnership with Black Cinema Collective, a group of multicultural artists and scholars who examine and celebrate works of African and Afro-diasporic filmmakers.
A science-fiction film and erotic thriller, LES SAIGNANTES follows two sex workers as they attempt to dispose of the corpse of one of their clients, a political leader. As usual, Jean-Pierre Bekolo mixes genres in this hybrid film, which is part female revenge film, part antisexist denunciation and part open criticism of the systemic corruption of Cameroonian politics. The director also looks to the future, placing Africa and women at the heart of a narrative in which they are usually absent, and drawing inspiration from the precolonial cultures of Cameroon's powerful Beti women's secret society to imagine Black heroines capable of fighting and healing the postcolonial state.
Journalist and critic Olivier Barlet (Africultures) describes the film as "astonishing, provocative, insolent, fun and perfectly paranoid.” With LES SAIGNANTES, Jean-Pierre Bekolo offers a future tale of a dystopian Cameroon, with burlesque outbursts and lurid lighting, mixing sex and death, as if to underline an impossibility: indeed, "How can you make a film of anticipation in a country that has no future? How can you make a detective film in a country where you can't investigate?" asks Bekolo. (Harvard Film Archive)
“Bekolo’s dismantling of rigid dichotomies and monolithic narratives of African tradition centers on contingency. His aim is not to offer viewers a ‘new’ mode of thought to substitute for the ‘old.’ Instead, he calls for us to be open to narrative and philosophical uncertainty—to a politics and thought ‘without guarantees.’ If we rely too much on fixed meanings and notions of authenticity and cultural determinism, then our thought becomes confined to what we have always known. Disrupting singular meanings turns a single code of thought into a polyvalent web of intellectual, and therefore social, potentiality. Emblematic of this polyvalent intellectual web is LES SAIGNANTES' narrative of two transgressive cyborgs who redefine notions of body and machine in their effort to subvert masculinist state power… Through their mechanized cyborg bodies, Majolie and Chouchou symbolically refuse the physical, spatial, and intellectual dominance that the masculinist state has imposed.” - Matthew Omelsky
This screening is promoted in partnership with Black Cinema Collective, a group of multicultural artists and scholars who examine and celebrate works of African and Afro-diasporic filmmakers.