We must make an effort to adjust to the norms and standards that will make Cameroonian cinema something serious, which can enter the global cultural market … but as long as we have our local way of telling stories, our local way of treating subjects, our local obsession with polygamy, widowhood, love … it's clear that there're some problems, that we're not up to date anymore. I'm sorry there're themes as polygamy … I'm sorry … we're not up to date!Footnote 1
This is how Pierre, a Cameroonian actor and scriptwriter, described the direction he thinks audiovisual production in Douala should take. African videos became famous among African spectators and international scholars precisely because of their ‘local way of telling stories’ and of ‘treating subjects’, something that distinguished them from African art films that were influenced by European auteur cinema languages (Haynes Reference Haynes2011: 67). Yet, since the end of the 1990s, an increasing number of video makers have started to look at the ‘local flavour’ they were famous for as an impediment to gaining access to the world stage, or, in Pierre's terms, to ‘enter the global cultural market’. In Nigeria, the New Nollywood phenomenon refers to those directors who draw more on international blockbusters than on local forms of popular culture, such as the Onitsha Market pamphlet literature and Yoruba travelling theatre (Batard Reference Batard, Jedlowski and Santanera2015: 74–81; Haynes Reference Haynes2014; Reference Haynes2016: 285–300; Jedlowski Reference Jedlowski, Krings and Okome2013). In a similar vein, in Ghana, the so-called professional video makers aspire to be accepted in the global cinema arena by borrowing plots and modes of narration from romantic Hollywood stories, instead of representing the specificities of the local context (Garritano Reference Garritano2013).Footnote 2 How can we interpret these changes in African video production? What is at stake when young urban dwellers make videos with a ‘global look’?
In this article, I address these questions through an analysis of Douala's video production. My focus is on the films referred to locally as ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’. I argue that their production represents a juvenile ‘artistic endeavour of self-creation’. This concept, introduced by Tshikala Biaya in his analysis of African youth cultures, describes a form of self-realization expressed by ‘particular procedures and an aesthetic with which new forms of sociability and cultural expression are associated, and constitutes a complete rupture with the dominant urban culture’ (Biaya Reference Biaya, Honwana and De Boeck2005: 222). Following this definition, I contend that ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ are informed by a stylistic break, through which youths claim – albeit with mixed results – a connection with the glamorous world of global cinema and distance themselves from the limits and failings in their daily lives (cf. Jua Reference Jua2003; Konings Reference Konings, Konings and Foeken2006; Trani Reference Trani and Courade2000; Séraphin Reference Séraphin2000; Simone Reference Simone2005; Ndjio Reference Ndjio, Murray and Myers2006). My analysis engages with the discussion of youth cultural production in contemporary Africa. Much of the literature has looked at African videos as forms of popular art, which, in Karin Barber's words, is ‘the work of local cultural producers speaking to local audiences about pressing concerns, experiences and struggles that they share’ (Barber Reference Barber and Barber1997: 2; cf. Barber Reference Barber1987). This perspective stresses that African videos dramatize everyday life, telling stories that are very close to ordinary people's lived experiences (cf. Bisschoff and Overbergh Reference Bisschoff and Overbergh2012; Haynes and Okome Reference Haynes and Okome1998). Emphasizing, in contrast, their aspiration towards a ‘global look’, I interpret ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ as part of an attempt to ‘expand experience’, linking up the social space of Douala with other parts of the world. I consider this ‘expansion’ as an audacious gesture that risks failing with every step.
My interpretation of ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ is inspired by James Ferguson's understanding of mimesis – ‘shadowing’, as he puts it – in the contemporary world. The contemporary world is a system of interconnected and ranked countries, where different ‘places in the world’ (Ferguson Reference Ferguson2006: 6) guarantee access to different economic and social rights. Different positions are no longer steps in a universal process of modernization, but rather ranked statuses, separated from each other by walls and borders. Within this context, the practice of mimesis – ‘I want to be like you’ – asserts a relationship and expresses an aspiration for equality. Like a shadow, it ‘implies not only resemblance but also a connection, a proximity, an equivalence, even an identity’ (ibid.: 17). I adopt this definition to interpret the syncretism of ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’, showing that the extensive quotation of foreign films represents an aesthetic strategy by the video makers to transcend the limits of their everyday experiences. As with cosmopolitan cultural styles (Ferguson Reference Ferguson1999: 212), it is not only about reaching out to an ‘outside world’; it can also be about seeking ‘worldliness’ at home. I touch on this aspect in films that combine the mimicking of global cinema's aesthetics with the mirroring of local elite cosmopolitan styles. Furthermore, I recall Brad Weiss's work (Reference Weiss, Honwana and De Boeck2005) to comprehend the other side of these forms of shadowing. In his analysis of popular culture among poor youths in Tanzania, Weiss foregrounds the fact that listening to African-American rappers allows for participation in a worldwide community of suffering; at the same time, it intensifies the sense of isolation, as it comes with the recognition that the sources of value, meaning and power of the globalized world are distant and inaccessible. I trace similar ambivalences in my analysis of the cultural practices of Douala youths, who constantly anticipate the failure of their shadowing activities, their cinema incarnating the ghost image of their global dreams.
Addressing the entanglements between the flow of transnational media and African cultural production, my work is grounded in Brian Larkin's (Reference Larkin1997) seminal research on Bollywood in Nigeria. Bollywood provides Hausa with a ‘parallel modernity’, an alternative world that is nevertheless similar to their own, and from which they can imaginatively engage with the changing social basis of contemporary life. The consumption of Bollywood fostered the writing of littatafan soyayya, love stories that proffer solutions to local readers’ everyday problems, borrowing from Indian styles of romance and gender relations. Like soyayya books, ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ explore the boundaries of local worlds and rework transnational media flows not necessarily originating in the West. Yet they also express specifically Cameroonian concerns. While Hausa writers engage with Bollywood because they perceive a ‘cultural familiarity’ with it, Cameroonian video makers emphasize the ‘foreign’ character of the media they shadow. In this article, I analyse their attempts to keep an ‘aura of unfamiliarity’ in ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ in relation to Douala society and the marginal position they occupy in it.
After situating Douala video production within its socio-economic milieu, I examine the directors’ stylistic practices, highlighting the extent to which their videos transform the local context of production and openly quote international hits – in particular Hollywood films, Brazilian telenovelas, Hong Kong martial arts movies and Nollywood dramas – which are screened daily on cable television. Subsequently, I explore the transformation of acting styles and show that actors have radically incorporated international celebrities’ facial expressions, body language and vocal tones. I then turn to the risks of these audacious stylistic ruptures, showing that the lack of funds and infrastructure, as well as the low technical quality of their work, constantly remind video practitioners of their marginal position in the global media arena. I conclude by addressing the ambivalence that lies at the heart of ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’, which convey both the desire of freeing oneself from cultural legacies and past categories of belonging and a deep awareness of the degraded position from which this aspiration originates.
Douala is a key place in which to explore these dynamics, since the globalization of video aesthetics has not always come together with higher production budgets and crews’ formal education. Several ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ are still made on a shoestring by practitioners who have learned by doing, unlike, for example, in Nigeria, where the New Nollywood directors have often attended film schools abroad and work with larger budgets. This Cameroonian specificity suggests that we pay attention not only to the economic but also to the cultural and social dimensions at work in the aesthetic transformations of such videos.
I carried out fieldwork in Douala in 2012 and 2013, using primary participant observation and discursive interviews. While I took part in the video practitioners’ different daily activities, the core of my participant observation consisted of attending the video rehearsals and shooting. When asked, I also agreed to be involved in the productions as an amateur actress.
Living and video making in Douala
‘It's an immense endeavour; honestly, you must be really tough to evolve [avancer] and become an adult in Douala … We find ourselves in a battlefield where only the boldest and most ambitious of us can make it.’Footnote 3 Caroline, a young journalist, described her experience of living in Douala to me in these terms. During the first decades after independence (1960s–1970s), ‘avancer’ and ‘becoming an adult’ were smooth transitions, guaranteed by the state that recruited new university graduates into public services. The close connection between having a university degree and a paid job promised upward mobility and the fonctionnaire-évolué (educated civil servant) was the local model of success (cf. Bayart Reference Bayart1979: 223–4; Mbembe Reference Mbembe1986; Ndjio Reference Ndjio, Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008: 207–8). Following the economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, this route could no longer be relied upon. The cuts in the public budget imposed by the structural adjustment programme led to a drastic contraction of the state, terminating its role as the primary employer of educated youths (Jua Reference Jua2003; Konings Reference Konings2002; Trani Reference Trani and Courade2000). ‘The state sleeps,’ ‘We're orphans,’ ‘We must forget about the state,’ young Cameroonians complained during my fieldwork.Footnote 4 Facing the failure to deliver of the postcolonial state, it has become necessary to find other, more individualized routes to success. With a lack of opportunities in the formal sector, the informal economy has grown enormously and a culture of débrouillardise (making do) is spreading. The most valued skill in life is the ability to quickly seize opportunities as they appear (Durang Reference Durang and Courade2000: 135; Konings Reference Konings, Konings and Foeken2006; Ndjio Reference Ndjio, Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008: 211; Niger-Thomas Reference Niger-Thomas, Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008). ‘We can't choose our lives, but we can choose to exploit what life offers us for the better,’ Dorcas B, a petty trader, explained to me.Footnote 5 At the same time, a feeling of immobility and claustrophobia emerges when, at times, this daily struggle entails a sense of ‘going nowhere’. Ramzi's expression ‘I'm on stand-by’Footnote 6 and Laurent's ‘Sometimes life seems like a struggle with no chance for success’Footnote 7 powerfully evoke this widespread perception of marginality and powerlessness. Dorcas T's work experience reveals a day-to-day life characterized by a myriad of petit jobs (odd jobs), which allow youths to keep their heads above water, but not to avancer:
I worked in a carpentry workshop: my task was presenting the firm’s types of wood and services to potential customers. I worked on a commission basis. Then I worked for an Israeli internet operator. They paid me quite well and they also gave me a commission on every product I was able to sell. But the firm was in hot water and after a while my boss offered me a promotion canapé [‘casting couch’ offer], which I turned down … Now I sell deodorant and trinkets; I always bring them with me, in my bag, and I show them to whoever I meet.Footnote 8
It is in this often disheartening setting that Douala's video production has developed. Its protagonists are the ‘children of the crisis’ (Biaya Reference Biaya, Honwana and De Boeck2005: 216), born and raised between the 1980s and 1990s. Following the liberalization of the audiovisual sector in 2000, they appropriated cheap digital technology to create series and movies in French (or parlé camerounais, Doula vernacularFootnote 9) to distribute on private TV cable stations, in DVD and VCD formats and, recently, through streaming online and screenings in informal cinema halls (often the Douala Bercy, in the district of Akwa).Footnote 10 The ease of entry, skills acquired outside the formal school system, small scale of operations, personal relationships, and the highly competitive market align this type of video production with the other activities of the city's informal economy (cf. Hansen and Vaa Reference Hansen, Vaa, Hansen and Vaa2004: 10).
The positioning of Douala video production within this sector is particularly evident in the organization of ‘troupes’, often put together by the artists, which are reminiscent of those involved in other small-scale ventures flourishing on the African continent at different times, such as the Yoruba travelling theatre (Barber Reference Barber2000) and the Kinshasa teledrama troupes (Pype Reference Pype2012). They are made up of a group of actors and a founder, called responsable (manager), boss (boss), président (president) or simply père (father), who generally works not only as an actor but also as the director, scriptwriter, cameraman and editor of the videos.Footnote 11 Rather than forming film crews to make a single film, these organizations make several films simultaneously, over a period of time. In this sense they resemble theatre companies that work together, show after show. The number of members, however, is highly variable, with secondary figures, who participate only occasionally in the life of the group, revolving around a central, stable core. Typically, the managers are small-scale professionals, teachers, journalists and accountants, while the actors have day jobs in the informal sector as street vendors, taxi drivers and small-scale artisans. All of them, without exception, dedicate time, energy and resources to video production without earning a living from it. Widespread disc piracy inhibits the selling of original DVDs and VCDs, while local private TV channels tend to air local productions for free, undermining the video practitioners’ profits.Footnote 12
The subject matter, for the most part, concerns the hardships of their daily lives in the poor district of Douala. People love these videos because of their proximity to local reality and call them histoires de la société (stories of society), histoires du quotidien (stories of the everyday), and miroirs de la société (mirrors of society). They have a fundamentally didactic orientation, resorting to an ‘aesthetic of exhortation’ (cf. Adesokan Reference Adesokan2011: 96) that dramatizes local experiences with exaggerations and caricatures, in order to denounce problems and spread a moral lesson among the people. This educational purpose reflects the local aesthetic canon, according to which an artwork is considered beautiful as long as it is ‘instructive’: that is, it offers the spectators a lesson applicable to their personal life situations. Aimé Wafo Kamga (stage name Makalaparti), one of the most famous directors and actors in Douala, explained this aspect as follows: ‘I'm a fan of those films that help people improve themselves … I mean films where people can mirror themselves … that screen social problems … from which the viewers can learn concrete lessons.’Footnote 13 The viewers echo him, voicing their appreciation is these terms: ‘It's a great film because we can learn many lessons from it!’Footnote 14 The edifying purpose and the proximity to common people's lived experiences are typical of a variety of popular art expressions on the continent (cf., for example, Barber Reference Barber2000; Newell Reference Newell2000; on other African video productions, cf., for example, Green-Simms Reference Green-Simms, Saul and Austen2010; Meyer Reference Meyer2015; Pype Reference Pype2012; Sereda Reference Sereda, Saul and Austen2010).
Although the local public values stories of society very highly, some of the younger video makers have recently started to criticize them. They have pejoratively renamed them théâtre filmé (filmed theatre), bouffonnerie (buffoonery) and cinéma de quartier (neighbourhood cinema), accusing them of being ‘provincial’ and ‘amateur’. By contrast, they have inaugurated ‘professional’ videos, in which they imitate the international hits they watch daily on cable television. Rather than engaging with the surrounding city in an attempt to disseminate a lesson, these videos aesthetically transfigure the local context. In Simone's words, they cultivate a ‘sense of open-endedness’ (Reference Simone, Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008: 139) towards the wider world. It is films in this new trend that Douala viewers describe as films qui ne semblent pas camerounais (films that don't seem Cameroonian).
‘I want to do things the way I see on the autre côté and why not even better!’
Films that don't seem Cameroonian have a clear ‘foreign look’. Unlike much African popular art, they do not combine ‘elements from the traditional and the metropolitan cultures … with the effect of radical departure from both’ (Barber Reference Barber1987: 13). Rather, they eclipse traditional cultures and mix elements from the heterogeneous local mediascape, such as Hollywood, Brazilian telenovelas (Rowe and Schelling Reference Rowe and Schelling1991), Asian martial arts movies and Nollywood dramas (Larkin Reference Larkin1997; Reference Larkin and Haynes2000). This pluralistic visual imagery resonates with the local concept of autre côté (other side), which often implies the West but can also mean Asia, South America, or, globally, anywhere but Africa, depending on the situation. More than a specific geographical place, it is a fantasy space in which one can imagine an alternative reality that inverts what life in Cameroon looks like.Footnote 15 Video practitioners pursue what might be termed an ‘extraverted aesthetic’ (Bayart Reference Bayart2000) to conform to what they see as the ‘international standard’ and the ‘global language of cinema’.
This aesthetic turn has led to the production of melodramas in which the city of Douala is almost invisible or, where it does appear, looks like any other global metropolis, inhabited by people who live in mansions and drive SUVs. The hustle and bustle of the popular neighbourhoods where the video practitioners and their viewers actually live is erased in favour of an upper-class cosmopolitan environment, devoid of any Cameroonian ‘specificities’. In this regard, a typical film is Inconstant (2013), by Enguérran Towa and Blaise Tankoua, which showcases the intricate story of a group of rich youngsters torn apart by love affairs and material interests. Melissa is Justin's fiancée, but she secretly dates and financially maintains Victor, while Justin has a secret affair with Judith. When all the treacheries come out, both women are pregnant. Justin decides to marry Judith, while Victor breaks up with Melissa, as he was only after her money. In the end, Victor is the victim of a scam and loses the huge amount of money he invested to obtain a fake passport and a visa for travel to Europe. In this complicated plot, the characters act within a social and cultural void (with the final reference to migration the only exception), and they are completely responsible for their behaviour. As a friend of Melissa's explains to her: ‘The guilt of what happened to you is only yours.’Footnote 16 The focus on the emotional rather than the socio-cultural and the resulting individualization of problems and their solutions are emphasized by the film's shooting style; by extensively using close-ups and indoor scenes, it is not possible to fit characters into a specific urban environment. As a viewer commented spontaneously: ‘I can't see anything Cameroonian!’Footnote 17
To its greatest extent, the search for an international look leads to movies that seem like assemblages of quotations from foreign films and are almost devoid of a plot. As Karin Barber shows, a quotation – i.e. the repetition of a sign that explicitly acknowledges its pre-existence – is a stylistic feature that is common in African texts and performances (Reference Barber2003: 329). Quotations allow the authors to prove their fluency in a variety of languages, giving them authority and legitimacy in the eyes of the public. In Ghanaian popular fiction, for example, a good writer does not invent original stories, but skilfully repeats pre-existing texts – often taken from the Western literary tradition – re-actualizing them in their books. Readers who recognize the source of the quotations will appreciate the author's competence and give credit for it (Newell Reference Newell2000: 9–11). Similarly, in Cameroonian professional videos, the appropriate quotation of foreign films allows directors to prove their familiarity with global cinema, legitimatizing their claim to professionalism.
This aesthetic trend is well represented by the last episode of the trilogy Frères d'Armes (2013, directed by Enguérran Towa), a three-hour video about a father struggling to release his daughter who has been kidnapped by a corrupt police officer and his gang. The virtually non-existent plot leaves room for long fight scenes that display the director's mastery of special effects and fight choreographies. Soundtracks like those of American blockbusters and action-movie clichés such as the spy who looks at his enemy through a newspaper page represent quotations from Hollywood, easily recognizable to the audience rather than being merely unaware syncretism or plagiarism. This leads to an ‘aesthetic of astonishment’ that recalls the ‘cinema of attractions’ from the beginning of the twentieth century (Gunning Reference Gunning, Braudy and Cohen2004). The audience exults in and is amazed by the director's and the actors’ skills, rather than identifying with the characters and their adventures; their astonishment gives credit to the artists’ professionalism.Footnote 18
This aesthetic trend can be understood in light of the concept of ‘shadowing’ (Ferguson Reference Ferguson2006), following Garritano's (Reference Garritano2013) interpretation of Ghanaian videos. Within this framework, the mimesis of the autre côté represents a claim for equal recognition by Cameroonian youngsters, who assert their connection with the global arena against the backdrop of their peripheral position. Their ambition to connect with the outside world can be coupled with the desire to seek forms of cosmopolitanism within their own society, for example in films such as Inconstant, where the upper-class setting evokes both Brazilian telenovelas (Rowe and Schelling Reference Rowe and Schelling1991: 109) and the life of the local elite. Although they offer little in the way of profit that might allow for significant economic improvements for the young people of Douala, the ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ nonetheless provide powerful social affirmations. Young people utilize them to declare that their socio-cultural universe is not clearly limited and locally circumscribed, but aims to reach a wider horizon, well beyond the marginal position to which they appear to have been relegated. This interpretation is confirmed by Cynthia, director, scriptwriter and actress in the Alfa-zone Entertainment troupe. Talking about her work, she said:
I wanted to do real cinema … we won't always live in poverty, in mediocrity. We're condemned to the margin of history and we've blocks in our heads. But I want to get out from this condition … I want to do things the way I see on the autre côté and why not even better!Footnote 19
The aspiration to ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’, however, can never be completely fulfilled. The directors who ‘speak’ to an imagined global audience cannot completely forget the expectations and demands of their local viewers, who are their first and most immediate buyers; they thus try to please them through a variety of strategies. This Janus-faced situation is a symptom of uncertain times, where the requirement to build one's own independent life trajectory comes together with the need (and desire) to remain rooted in family, ethnic and neighbourhood networks, the only sources of comfort and support when failures occur (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh, Moore and Sanders2006: 36; Trani Reference Trani and Courade2000: 163). As Courade (Reference Courade and Courade2000: 31) reminds us, among young urban Cameroonians facing everyday economic hardships, what seems like an ‘every man for himself’ attitude does not imply excessive individualism. Rather, the personal networks that it helps to secure have become ever more fundamental to finding a job and a house, and, more generally, to assuring oneself of some economic and social security.
In this light, we may turn again to the trilogy Frères d'Armes, which demonstrates some strategies that directors use to involve the local audience. The fight scenes described above make explicit and knowing reference to Hollywood, and the director Enguérran abandons the didactic purpose that is generally appreciated by Cameroonian spectators: ‘Cinema … is presenting another world. How can I explain it? Presenting another world … making the public live in movies … I love fiction.’Footnote 20 At the same time, however, the heroes of Enguérran's Frères d'Armes do not inhabit a fantastical world; rather, they belong to the well-known social reality of Douala. For example, in the first episode of the trilogy, the main character who fights a gang is a bendskineur (moto-taxi driver), while the police officer who arrests the evildoers gets around the city in an old yellow taxi, just like most Douala inhabitants. The chases and fights take place in the streets and districts of New Bell, Youpwe and Village, immediately recognizable to Douala's inhabitants. These elements have the aim of ‘hooking’ the local public, who will not feel excluded, but, on the contrary, will experience a sense of familiarity with the world à la Bruce Lee on the screen. The dances that some spectators performed to the American soundtracks, at the Douala Bercy premiere, clearly express a feeling of communion and reveal the pleasure of seeing two realities, usually experienced as unconnected, united in the same aesthetic form. In addition, the fact that the characters gaze into the camera while they carry out dangerous stunts inserts a sort of self-irony alongside the Hollywood aspiration of the director. For a moment, he reveals not only the fiction but also his belonging to the same social and cultural world as his Douala public.
‘First of all, we must work’
When we're humourists and aspire to do cinema we must read a lot; we must follow a training. Humour can be done on the streets, among ordinary people, like theatre, but cinema entails naturalness. When we are humourists and want to move to the cinema level, we must work hard, we must follow a training, we must attend seminars.Footnote 21
With these words, Jean de Dieu (stage name Man no lap) described the professionalization path of those actors who want to move from ‘filmed theatre’ to the ‘cinema level’. He emphasized ‘training’, ‘work’ and ‘studying’ (‘we must read a lot’ and ‘we must attend seminars’, he says), showing that international ‘flavour’ is not easily acquired but requires effort, discipline and concentration. The multifaceted training path he favours is aimed at the transformation of one's acting style to render it compatible with that of the actors working at the ‘international level’. ‘If a Canadian enterprise comes here to select some actors, a professional actor is someone who is ready, who doesn't need any training,’ an actor explained.Footnote 22
As we have seen above, the typically ‘Cameroonian’ stories of society are characterized by an ‘aesthetic of exhortation’ (Adesokan Reference Adesokan2011: 96), according to which performers emphasize body movements and voices in order to convey a moral lesson. Professional actors label this pronounced expressivity ‘theatrical’ and ‘mechanical’, in contrast to the genuine ‘naturalness’ of the foreign actors they would like to imitate. For example, in the episode ‘La déception’ from the series Balade dans la Cité (2006 onwards, directed by Aimé Wafo Kamga), Julie reacts to her son's suicide by crossing her arms behind her head and screaming loudly. Her cries and gestures are firmly condemned by those artists who consider them ‘artificial’. ‘It's clear that she's not an experienced actress,’Footnote 23 commented Noumbissi (stage name Philo, a screenwriter and actor), despite his awareness that Julie was anything but a beginner, as she had acted in numerous series for several years. Similarly, Martini (a scriptwriter and actor) stated that he ‘would have preferred to see her tears leaking down her cheeks’,Footnote 24 recalling scenes of weeping women, an essential element of the Brazilian telenovelas that are broadcast daily on local television channels. The representation of pain in Au-delà de Tout Soupçon – a local series that was praised as the ‘most professional’ during my fieldwork (it was screened on the French TV channel TV5 Monde) – exemplifies the stylistic break involved in so-called ‘natural acting’. During the first season, the main character Chantal expresses her despair through copious and silent tears, as she must cope with her husband, who cheats on her and takes part in satanic rituals. Her gesturing is very different from Julie's loud screams in Balade dans la Cité. Chantal's silent weeping resonates with that of the Brazilian female characters rather than with the local feminine way of expressing pain. The viewers noticed this stylistic shift. During the broadcasting of the episode of Au-delà de Tout Soupçon in which Chantal is present at her mother-in-law's death, Hubert told me in anticipation: ‘Now you'll see how much African women cry!’ Afterwards he was disoriented by the silent reaction of Chantal.Footnote 25
How do actors manage to become ‘natural’, abandoning ‘theatrical’ acting style? The words of Cynthia (the director, scriptwriter and actress of the Alfa-zone Entertainment troupe quoted above) provide some insight:
I've studied all the different emotions, the body language, the gesturing, the stage presence you can see in foreign films … all that is related to actors’ acting style. I focused on this and I've studied this for a long time, before instilling it into my actors, who are my pupils … because I train the actors as well.Footnote 26
Cynthia's reference to the training process as a progressive incorporation of body gestures and expressions recalls Marcel Mauss's notion of the ‘technique of the body’: that is, the practical learning, through assimilation, of corporeal, emotional, visual and mental schemes that, once apprehended, are performed with ease, ability and savoir faire (naturalness). They are ‘physio-psycho-sociological assemblages of series of actions’ that must be assimilated through imitation (Mauss Reference Mauss1973: 85). Like the techniques of the body, the actors’ training aims at teaching (‘instilling’, in Cynthia's words) the ‘proper way’ to move, talk and express emotions, through an education/imitation of the bodies that takes global celebrities as models.Footnote 27
Some examples from my fieldwork will help clarify this point. In Au-delà de Tout Soupçon, a rich and sophisticated woman named Mary is angry with her lover Thierry because she discovers a lipstick stain on his shirt and fears he is cheating on her. During the shooting of the scene, in order to make the actress understand how to play the role, Esther (in charge of the troupe's training) made a suggestion. She told Mary to imitate Norma's reaction in an episode of the telenovela Irrational Heart (2011, directed by Dennis Carvalho) that had been broadcast the day before on the TV channel Canal 2 International. The actress immediately got the point and, in the following take, threw her drink in her lover's face and then slapped him. During the shooting of another scene, Thierry dropped some ice cubes in Mary's glass of whisky. Not ‘trained’ enough in the body techniques of professional video, he picked up the ice tongs the wrong way and dropped the cubes carelessly, splashing some whisky out of the glass. Esther immediately stopped the shooting. ‘Quartier! Quartier! Quartier! [Neighbourhood! Neighbourhood! Neighbourhood!],’ she cried, highlighting that the everyday techniques of the body that are typical of ‘neighbourhood cinema’ were not to be displayed in professional videos.Footnote 28
However, while Mauss emphasizes the vertical dimension of the training, which is ‘imposed … from above’ (Reference Mauss1973: 73) by people with ‘social authority’ (ibid.: 85), among Cameroonian youths horizontal ways of learning prevail, as incorporation work is carried out with the help of peers.Footnote 29 Joseph (stage name Papa Massayo), for example, explained what proper training in acting is:
First of all, we must work. Working with the group is always fruitful. We can work on our own, but it's better to work with the group … because … like the other day, I received some criticism … from this, I can gradually become a better actor. Beyond the group, actors need to work on their own, looking at what other people do … at what is going on elsewhere, for example among our Nigerian brothers. They are great actors! They've learned … we have a great potential here in Africa, but we must look at what the others do … When you look at what other people do, you can progress … but first of all, you must work with the group and be disciplined.Footnote 30
As this comment clearly shows, the ‘group’ plays a major role. Some directors select the cast and immediately start shooting in order to minimize costs. Others, instead, transform the troupe into a sort of school, by regularly meeting up with the actors to practise improvisation, study the scripts and rehearse the scenes.Footnote 31 In these circumstances, the atmosphere is highly didactic. The managers tend to behave like teachers and the actors like students. For example, Aimé, the founder of the troupe Les Grands Compagnons de Douala, addressed his actors as follows: ‘Adja, have you studied the script? Can you tell me what you've retained? … OK, at least you've read it. Now, open the script to page five.’Footnote 32 Beyond checking the actors’ preparation, he corrected their French errors, explained the related grammatical rules, and gave ‘homework’ for the following meeting. In a similar vein, Julie (stage name Adja) commented: ‘It's not difficult to enter into the character's shoes … but it's difficult to remember the lines, because of French. It's like being back at school, although we left school a long time ago.’Footnote 33 During the shooting of the series Le Vertige de la Parole (2013, directed by Martial Choukoileu Tchouassi), in which I was given a small role, Julie asked me whether I had shot my scene or was still rehearsing, as she was: ‘Have you got your diploma? I've been left behind!’Footnote 34 The didactic atmosphere that underlies video practice is strengthened by the fact that the rehearsals often take place in borrowed classrooms, where the manager sits at the front desk and the actors at the students’ desks.Footnote 35
The actors are not simply students passively waiting to be trained; rather, they play an active, formative role. In particular, during rehearsals, they make comments and criticize each other, to the extent that some managers – for example, the founder of the troupe Africaanstone – delegate the leading of the training to the veteran actors. Furthermore, audience opinions are welcome as tips for improvement and are solicited through different strategies. Some of the actors post sketches and clips on Facebook, asking their followers to comment on them, while others call friends and acquaintances after their movies and series are aired with the aim of receiving praise and advice.
Finally, beyond the important role of peers (colleagues, friends and acquaintances), each actor is at least partially responsible for his or her own training. In this more solitary dimension of learning, the actors watch the videos in which they have performed to observe their interpretations and ‘check their mistakes’. The actors who do not engage in this form of self-training are harshly reprimanded by their colleagues and by the director. In addition, they cautiously watch foreign movies on cable television to copy facial expressions, vocal tones and gestures from their international colleagues. In this regard, Simon (stage name Papa Mousango) said, ‘I watch especially myself, to see my mistakes so that I can improve,’Footnote 36 while Susan stated: ‘I watch Nigerian and Ghanaian movies to copy their style. I copy what I'm interested in, particularly the face expression. They are so good at that! … I also watch Brazilian films [telenovelas] and films from Côte d'Ivoire.’Footnote 37 Similarly, Robert stated: ‘As soon as I can, I watch a movie. I watch movies from all over the world and when I see something I need, I pick it. You could say that I copy from all over the world!’Footnote 38
To conclude, professional actors consciously incorporate elements of cultural alterity, expanding their local repertoire of body techniques. In this regard, acting represents one of those (rare) moments of creation and reform, during which – following Mauss (Reference Mauss1973: 85) – the education of the body implies experimentation and innovation, instead of socio-cultural reproduction. As such, the training of actors recalls Appadurai's argument (Reference Appadurai1996: 6) on global media flows, which have converted ‘the glacial force of the habitus into the quickened beat of improvisation’, partially transforming culture into an object of conscious choice. Significantly, beyond discipline, a sense of freedom and possibility characterizes the acting practice, as youths reinvent themselves as ‘professional artists’ by choosing their role models not from their kinship network, ethnic group or national community, but from well-known global celebrities, now seen as their new grand frères (older brothers).Footnote 39 This playful atmosphere, open to experimentation, represents one of the pleasures of acting, which implies personal enrichment and self-cultivation in addition to work and discipline. This is clear among those actors who put training at the core of their passion for cinema: ‘Working as an actor developed me, cultivated me … let me say it, it completed me,’ Joseph explained.Footnote 40
Pirate cinema
I have shown that directors and actors aim to expand the horizons of their life worlds through videos that aesthetically mark their connection to global cinema. In this last section, I focus on the difficulties of these audacious acts by looking at those cases in which the ‘tuning in’ to global cinema has failed. Furthermore, I examine when video practice, rather than offering a sense of openness and possibility, emphasizes a feeling of exclusion.
Let me start with the experience of Balon, a young boy who worked on the video Strange World (2008, directed by Balon B. Njilu) as producer, director, cameraman and editor.Footnote 41 The back of the DVD cover shows a picture of Douala's famous monument Nouvelle Liberté (1996, made by Joseph-Francis Sumégné), revealing that Balon wished to make a high-profile movie, consistent with the quality standards of the global cultural market. During the production and distribution of the video, however, he faced a series of setbacks that he saw as having undermined the success of his project, radically overturning the meaning of his involvement in cinema. Like other video makers, Balon complained about the lack of resources and infrastructure. He regretted the fact that he could not afford to properly compensate the actors, who were poorly motivated. Furthermore, working with just one camera (borrowed from a friend) had forced him to shoot every scene several times, employing different framing distances. With the actors changing positions and lines each time, it caused him continuity problems during the editing. Likewise, the distribution of the video did not go as well as hoped. To overcome the shortcomings of the local distribution platform, Balon experimented with a variety of strategies, but they proved to be ineffective, preventing him from getting back the money he had invested in the production. In particular, as a director, he suffered the humiliation of peddling the DVDs on the streets of Douala, ‘like a sauveteur’ (street vendor), as he sadly noted. Even the selling of the broadcast rights to Africa Magic PlusFootnote 42 for €600 had not turned out to be very successful because the TV channel continued to air the movie after the agreed term. Finally, with much sorrow, Balon recalled that he had not even had the agreement of his crew to choose the art for the front of the DVD cover. Although he preferred the image of the main character at sunset, the other actors insisted on being included. They had agreed to participate in the movie for no pay, but insisted on being rewarded with some visibility.
These mishaps prevented Balon from connecting with the global cinema world. They left him with a sense of impotence and frustration, which would finally make him abandon video production. It is worth quoting his words extensively in order to fully grasp his bitterness:
The cinema industry is thriving around us. We would like to be part of the contemporary cinema industry, but we don't deserve it. Young Cameroonians should dedicate themselves to other fields … fields they are good at, like agriculture, for example. A friend of mine, who – I don't know how – is always informed about new releases in Nigeria, showed me the trailers of Last Flight to Abuja and The Mirror Boy on YouTube … These are films that follow the international standard. There is no chance for Cameroonians to make it. We must forget about that! … [The] Cameroon cinema landscape is disgusting and discouraging. Young people should ask the government to invest in agriculture, not in cinema … Look at Nigerian actors: they go to expensive places, they drive fancy cars, they have mansions. It's so frustrating! I don't want to be part of this [cinema in Cameroon]!Footnote 43
Balon's frustration reveals that video making does not necessarily go hand in hand with recognition and prestige, offering a sense of openness to the world beyond the limits of one's everyday prospects. Although digital technology has given the masses access to media production, it has not overcome economic inequalities. As a result, Douala video makers operate in an ambiguous space, where the glamour conferred on cinema always risks being undermined by the difficulties met on the ground, such as electricity blackouts, poor locations, and computers afflicted by viruses. To describe this difficult situation, video practitioners use the expression cinéma piraté (pirate cinema), which entails the idea of a fake, non-authentic cinema. For instance, on the set of Destination Fatale (2013, directed by Cédric Michel Deugoué), a horror movie featuring an attack by demons on a group of students, the camera operator sorrowfully commented on the lack of stage costumes, which forced him to frame only the policeman's chest, as the uniform trousers were missing: ‘Can you see how we pirate cinema? How we are forced to “fake”?’Footnote 44
The idea of ‘pirate cinema’ recalls the more general distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ that is typical of the local understanding of reality. It is not uncommon to hear people reporting that in Cameroon one can find only ‘fake products’, ‘non-original goods’, ‘goods that break down immediately’, as opposed to ‘real stuff’, ‘perfectly working’ items that circulate on the autre côté. The directors always complain about the low quality of hard disks, USB sticks and cameras that can be bought in Douala, comparing these with the ‘real’ products that, they claim, can be bought abroad. Weiss (Reference Weiss, Honwana and De Boeck2005: 116) remarks on a similar situation among the barbers and their customers in the Tanzanian town of Arusha. The youths flock to the local barbershops to consume forms of global popular culture, such as Afro-American rap, taking part in an ‘imagined cosmopolitanism’ (Foster Reference Foster1999 quoted in Weiss Reference Weiss, Honwana and De Boeck2005: 115) that resonates with the cultural practice of Cameroonian professional video practitioners. According to Weiss, however, their belief that their radios and tape recorders are ‘fake’ and of ‘low quality’ simultaneously gives voice to their feeling of exclusion, revealing their awareness that the dynamism and force of the global world lie elsewhere and are inaccessible to them.
The idea of a ‘pirate cinema’ conveys a similar conceptualization of the world.Footnote 45 While the extraverted aesthetic allows Cameroonian video makers to ‘shadow’ the autre côté, claiming their proximity to global cinema, the accidents and problems faced on the ground constantly remind them of their particular ‘place in the world’ (in the sense used by Ferguson (Reference Ferguson2006), quoted above). From this perspective, the idea of ‘pirate cinema’ evokes the risk that the operation of shadowing might fail, the copy never establishing a relationship of exact similarity with the original. Therefore, it shapes an awareness that the sources of power of the global world are in a faraway place that is elsewhere, out of reach. As signs of the persistent condition of marginality, even minor hitches trigger painful reflections and comparisons between life içi au pays (here in Cameroon) and on the autre côté. Video practitioners experience this gap with great suffering and continuously point it out: ‘Can you see what we have to do for cinema?,’ ‘In Cameroon cinema means sacrifice,’ and ‘We suffer because of cinema,’ they used to tell me during my fieldwork. The suffering and the sacrifices they refer to are very real, being physically felt. When the sun beats down during long days of shooting with no water and food, and with the dehydrated and sweating bodies incarnating their exclusion from the global media world, there is a tangible sense of inequality and injustice.
Video filmmaking in Cameroon is thus both a source of empowerment and prestige and a sign of marginality and powerlessness. On the one hand, video makers can imaginatively project themselves into the centre of the global arena, bridging the gap between ambitions and opportunities. They make an effort to look like their international idols by adopting various forms of imitation, including the programmatic integration of gestures and facial expressions. In doing so, their aim is to capture the possibilities and power that they see as representing life on the autre côté. On the other hand, the impediments on the ground recall and confirm – through physical feelings, such as thirst, hunger, heat and fatigue – the gap that separates them from the Hollywood studios and the global cinema world, strengthening their awareness of their marginal position. This contradiction appears to be irresolvable. In professional video making, Douala youths feel, live and experiment with multiple levels simultaneously: the neighbourhood, the city, Cameroon, Africa and the autre côté. This accumulation of references is commonly found in African contemporary urban life, where – following Castryck and Sieveking (Reference Castryck and Sieveking2014) – different temporalities and spatialities intersect in people's everyday practices, giving shape to a multi-layered social space.
Let us briefly recall the activity of the troupe Alfa-zone Entertainment, which exemplifies the ambiguities of the youths’ video practice described so far. For two years the members of the troupe met at the campus of the University of Douala to rehearse their scripts. As Cynthia said in the interview quoted above, they wanted to do ‘real cinema’, like that of the autre côté. However, they failed to make even a single video because they could not afford to buy or rent the equipment. During rehearsals they resorted to fantasy to imagine the camera position and the props, conferring on them a certain ‘materiality’ through the care with which they pretended to handle them. In the telling words of an actress: ‘We act with invisible objects, but you must think about these objects as if they were real.’Footnote 46
Conclusion
In this article I have analysed Douala video production as a strategy used by urban youth to escape the frustrations and impediments of life in chaotic city neighbourhoods and to feel a connection to the powerful world of global cinema. Video directors are openly inspired by the Hollywood films, Brazilian telenovelas and Hong Kong martial arts dramas they watch on cable television. Similarly, professional actors remodel their acting styles in order to follow what they see as the ‘naturalness’ of global celebrities, by embodying new ways of moving, talking and expressing emotions. Video making, however, is not only a source of empowerment and recognition, but also a sign of marginality and powerlessness. The difficulties and barriers typical of local video production continuously remind the artists of their marginal position, highlighting an ambivalent and multifaceted video practice. In this regard, professional artists’ appropriation of foreign cultural elements involves neither a passive imitation nor a creative appropriation, independent of contemporary world relations of domination and inequality.
By choosing their identification models among global movie stars, Douala youths become involved in acts of self-styling that recall the ‘artistic endeavour[s] of self-creation’ of African street cultures described by Tshikala Biaya (Reference Biaya, Honwana and De Boeck2005: 222). To find their models and paths to realization, they look neither at their elders nor at the figure of the fonctionnaire-évolué, shattered by the economic crisis (Jua Reference Jua2003; Ndjio Reference Ndjio, Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008); they would rather find inspiration in the global cultural landscape, where they choose international cinema stars as their social heroes. Through ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ they affirm their position as the creators of their own destiny and refashion themselves as citizens of the global world, breaking both with cultural heritage and past categories of belonging such as kinship, ethnic groups, religion and political parties, and with colonial and postcolonial logic centred on France and francophone culture. However, this audacious gesture is far from being one of a complete break, or a full liberation. They are dogged by poor finances and the infrastructural challenges that undermine their dream of reaching the global arena and bind them to a much more restricted horizon of possibilities. In this respect, ‘films that don't seem Cameroonian’ are a very Cameroonian affair.
Riven with profound ambiguity, these movies urge us to partly revise their categorization as forms of African popular art. Rooted in the intermediate urban sector, they are reminiscent of many expressions of popular art on the continent. They are forms of art created by small-scale organizations working with little equipment, training and capital. Bricolage also permeates their strongly syncretic aesthetic (cf. Barber Reference Barber1987). Nevertheless, they also speak of something beyond that world. Instead of giving meaning to the surrounding social reality, through stories that dramatize the lived experiences of producers and viewers, they are intended to transcend local life worlds, imaginatively offering Douala youths the chance to feel free from the constraints of their local situation, and to feel part of a wider horizon of possibilities. They are expressions of new cultural ambitions.
