Volume 4 Issue 2
Cover Date
October 2012
CONTENTS
Editorial
Celebrating 40 years of films made by women directors in francophone Africa
BRIGITTE ROLLET
Articles
Aesthetic and narrative strategies in the films of selected African women directors
SHEILA PETTY
The emergence of women’s film-making in francophone sub-Saharan Africa: From pioneering figures to contemporary directors
LIZELLE BISSCHOFF
A transnational feminist rereading of post-Third Cinema theory: The case of Maghreb documentary
STEFANIE VAN DE PEER
Women in Film in Cameroon: Thérèse Sita-Bella, Florence Ayisi, Oswalde Lewat and Josephine Ndagnou
OLIVIER JEAN TCHOUAFFÉ - SEE COMMENTS BELOW
BETI ELLERSON
Book review
Screens and Veils: Maghrebi Women's Cinema, Florence Martin (2011)
STEFANIE VAN DE PEER
Reports
Festival International de Cinéma Vues d’Afrique
SHEILA PETTY
A gender perspective on the 23rd edition of the JCC
PATRICIA CAILLÉ
COMMENTS BY BETI ELLERSON ON
Women in Film in Cameroon: Thérèse Sita-Bella, Florence Ayisi, Oswalde Lewat and Josephine Ndagnou
by Olivier Jean Tchouaffé
In the article “Women in Film in Cameroon” by Olivier Jean Tchouaffé, published in Journal of African Cinemas in 2012, he gives an overview of Thérèse Sita-Bella and her pioneering work as cineaste, lauding the trailblazing path that she has left for those who follow. However, in his book Passion of the Reel: Cinematic versus Modernist Political Fictions in Cameroon, (Intellect Books) published three years later in 2015, curiously, she is not cited among the pioneers of Cameroonian cinema and is basically ignored, with scant attention paid to her and her work under the title "Cameroonian Women in Film: Thérèse Sita-Bella, Florence Ayisi, Oswalde Lewat and Josephine Ndagnou. This gaping omission is puzzling, especially after the prominent place that she is accorded in “Women in Film in Cameroon”. It is as if there are two faces to Olivier Jean Tchouaffé’s approach in the discussion of women. In the issue devoted to African women filmmakers, she is given accolades for her role as pioneer, while in a broader discussion of Cameroonian cinema as a whole she is dismissed and snubbed—giving place to only the men of Cameroonian cinema history. Was this article about women filmmakers in the Journal of African Cinemas a mere stepping stone for Olivier Jean Tchouaffé to more “serious” matters about men?