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- Jean-Pierre Bekolo is a noted African film director from Cameroon. He already garnered attention at the Cannes Film Festival with his debut film Quartier Mozart (1992), with a style that is playful, comic, and sardonic became the representative of a new generation that has been working against the restrictive expectations of African cinema, mixing genres and linking pop with politics. He directed Aristotle's Plot (1996), the African entry in the British Film Institute's series of films commemorating the centenary of cinema that has included the participation of artists such as Scorsese, Bertolucci, Frears, Miller, Reitz, and Godard. Part action movie send-up, part parody of Aristotle's rules, part satire on Africa's preoccupation with itself, this first African film selcted at Sundance shows Bekolo to be an "increasingly fearless trickster."His avant-garde political thriller Les Saignantes (2005) that premiered at the Toronto film festival was nominated in two categories at the French Césars in 2009 and is now considered to be the first African sci-fi movie. Les Saignantes won the Silver Stallion and Best Actress Awards at Fespaco (Pan African Film and Television Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) in 2007. Bekolo has also created in 2008, a video installation called An African Woman in Space that was on display at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, as part of the Diaspora exhibition curated by Claire Denis. Banned in Cameroon in 2013, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's controversial film Le President questions the phenomenon of Africa's "perpetual governments". His new film, a 4 hour documentary Les Choses et Les Mots de Mudimbe is part of the official selection of the 2015 Berlinale. "An unusual film, as fascinating as its object/subject, opulent, sensitive, clever, and radical. Another station of delightful postcolonial, cosmopolitan filmmaking". Alongside his work as a film director, Bekolo is an activist, he writes and publishes, in addition to teaching at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and at Duke University. Recently he has been dividing his time between the USA, France, and Cameroon, and starting in the summer of 2015 he will be a fellow of the Artists Program at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Edwige N'guetta
- Jean-Pierre Bekolo is an avant-garde filmmaker whose imaginative work overturns stereotypes of Africa and African cinema. His entertaining films operate on multiple layers, engaging viewers with thrilling stories, biting humour and dramatic aesthetics. He was born June 8th, 1966 in Yaounde, he studied physics at University of Yaounde 1984-1987 and Television production (editing) at Institute National de l'Audiovisuel - INA in Paris where he also studied semiotics under Christian Metz 1988-1989. He was part of the inaugural class of the Clinton School of Public Service (President Clinton school of public service for social change) in Little Rock Arkansas in 2005.
1992 Jean-Pierre Bekolo is a noted African film director from Cameroon. He already garnered attention at the Cannes Film Festival with his debut film Quartier Mozart made at the age of 25, with a style that is playful, comic, and sardonic became the representative of a new generation that has been working against the restrictive expectations of African cinema, mixing genres and linking pop with politics. Quartier Mozart won number of awards (Locarno, Montreal... and was nominated for the Surtherland Trophy in London along with Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.) An advocate of artistic freedom, Bekolo is committed to realising Africa's philosophies and cultures. Quartier Mozart shows the hybridity, complexity and humour in urban Yaounde in a playful, hip-hop reinvention of a traditional tale about gender, power, magic and politics. 1995 He directed Aristotle's Plot , the African entry in the British Film Institute's series of films commemorating the centenary of cinema that has included the participation of artists such as Scorsese, Bertolucci, Frears, Miller, Reitz, and Godard. Part action movie send-up, part parody of Aristotle's rules, part satire on Africa's preoccupation with itself, this first African film selected at Sundance shows Bekolo to be an "increasingly fearless trickster." Aristotle's Plot parodies rules and definitions, action movies and 'African' cinema made for European audiences, while aesthetically reflecting on the nature of existence, its ambiguities and absence of rigid categories.
1996 Bekolo's work on the re-representation of Africa also includes insightful documentaries that seek to educate, such as Grandmother's Grammar on groundbreaking Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety.
2005 His avant-garde political thriller Les Saignantes selected by the MOMA in New-York in 2017 among the 70 science-fiction classics. It premiered at the Toronto film festival, was nominated in two categories at the French Césars (2009); it is considered to be the first African sci-fi movie. Les Saignantes won the Silver Stallion & Best Actress Awards at Fespaco (Pan African Film Festival Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) in 2007. This dystopian, sci-fi comic thriller with stunning surreal visuals, presents extreme corruption, feminism, social decay and intergenerational conflict for review.
2013 Banned in Cameroon in 2013, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's controversial film Le President (2015 AMAA Awards Best screenplay and Jury Special Prize) Aiming to incite viewers to conceive an alternate reality, his fake documentary The President is a hilarious, biting satire on African leaders who cling to power.
2015 Les Choses et Les Mots de Mudimbe on the renowned Congolese philosopher, multi-linguist and uber-polymath. This 4 hours documentary was part of the official selection of the 2015 Berlinale. "An unusual film, as fascinating as its object/subject, opulent, sensitive, clever, and radical. Another station of delightful postcolonial, cosmopolitan filmmaking".
2016 Naked Reality Bekolo persistently pushes the limits of representation ("I know I crossed boundaries," says the main character of Naked Reality, confirming the director's own quest) as he searches for new ways to tell a story. This latest film, is presented to the world as an unfinished product but not a typical one. Bekolo invites everyone to contribute their craft, their ideas, their fantasy to this concept film on a website designed especially for collaborative purposes. Naked Reality is easily the most difficult film to date in Bekolo's filmography. Shot in black and white, this hour-long experiment follows a vague plot.This is an "afrofuturistic/sci-fi" film taking place 150 years in the future when the human race is plagued by a terrible virus - "bad luck." The main character seemingly travels back and forth between the present and the future, and also carries on conversations with ancestors as well as with alternate selves. But the ultimate goal of the film is a philosophical and aesthetic exploration of the dividing line between fiction and reality, which is perhaps Bekolo's main artistic interest. Among the director's memorable lines on the topic, consider the following: "We shouldn't just be making movies, we should be changing reality."
2017 Our Wishes 10 episodes TV Drama series; an African perspective on the first encounter between Cameroonian chiefs and the Germans around the signature of the treaty that will make Cameroon a German colony just before the Berlin conference of 1884.
2017 Miraculous Weapons The story of three women in the middle of the sixties in a State called Free State find themselves around a man on death row. One arrives from Europe after few letters with man to support him, another is the wife of the man running a Bed and Breakfast next to the prison, and the last one teaches French courses in the prison.
2017 Afrique, la Pensée en Mouvement Part I and Part II 1h44 and 1h37; two part documentary on Les Ateliers de Dakar created in 2016 by Achille Mbebe and Felwine Sarr about the most important intellectuals on the continent annual gathering to rethink Africa.
2018-2019 Our Wishes TV series on German colonial historian Cameroon before the Berlin Conference.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Moucheka Walla
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