Rosine Mbakam

“Mandabi of Sembène. When I saw that film I just really see for the first time someone who was looking at me, someone who was looking at my culture. I was looking when I was child a lot of American films and French film also, but it was open me to the world but not connect me to my reality. It was the first time that I was seeing a film that really connect me to my reality.”

“The Black Girl. I grew up in Cameroon and wanted to do Cinema without having any Legacy about Cinema... Black Girl really putting in my face my own colonization because I went to Belgium to study Cinema and hoping that in Belgium I would learn how to tell my story but I discovered that I already have it in me. What I really learned in Belgium was just some tools or how to think about that Cinema. What do you want to say Rosine? What do you want to say?”

“Bicycle Thieves. I don't really in my way of doing, I don't create something, I just find it in the daily life of people and organize it because I really hope that we all have a bit of Cinema in us and I just have to find it. And Bicycle Thieves really help me to just see that reality was possible, that just to capture the reality as it is as we are seeing it.”

“Close-Up. The mixing of fiction and documentary was so powerful that I was like Safi Faye said, there was no boundary between—as African we don't have no limit between fiction and documentary. And Close-Up, it's really in alignment with that. It also opened me to the work of Makhmalbaf and how I was connected to people that I don't even know or imagine before... It also free me to just say to myself I don't have to choose between documentary and fiction.”