a Black man watches another Black man speak on a TValr

Le président

Conversation with Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Lilia Kilburn
Directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo.
With Massam A. Biroko, Gérard Essomba, Max Essouma.
Cameroon/Germany, 2013, DCP, color, 63 min.
French with English subtitles.
DCP source: Weltfilm

How do you know when it's time to leave? This is one of the questions raised by Jean-Pierre Bekolo's forth feature film, shot in Cameroon, a country ruled for over forty years by Paul Biya. In this film Bekolo also analyzes the congruent relationship between the media and political power in order to question, in the form of a satirical film, the meaning of democratic political representation in the context of contemporary Cameroon. (For instance, pay attention to the TV show footage included in wider shots.) With his signature mixing of codes and genres, Bekolo portrays here a fictitious president with dark glasses, imbued with power. Unsurprisingly, the film was censored by the Cameroonian authorities when it was released in 2013. Yet being president is not a divine gift, and "being the son of a president not enough to become one," as the rapper, political activist and exile Valsero, who appears in the film, reminds us.

00:00 / 00:00
      Le président introduction and post-screening discussion with Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Lilia Kilburn and Julie Mallozzi.

      Part of film series

      Read more

      Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2024 McMillan-Stewart Fellow

      Current and upcoming film series

      Read more

      The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

      Read more

      Ben Rivers, Back to the Land

      Read more

      Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

      Read more

      Make Way for Tomorrow. Carson Lund’s Eephus

      Read more

      Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue

      Read more

      David Lynch, New Dimensions

      Read more

      Museum Hours: Mati Diop’s Dahomey

      Read more

      Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

      Read more

      Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy