The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman (2018)
Film (Original Language: French)
Rosine Mbakam
Introduced by Elisa Joy White
Belgium-based filmmaker Rosine Mbakam returns to her homeland of Cameroon after seven years away. She brings her young son and husband, who is not seen on camera, to revisit what she describes as the “darkness.” The darkness to which she refers represents the memories of her life in Yaounde, Cameroon, the silences she had not considered while growing up, and the questions that went unasked. It is a poignant documentary meditation on the ways leaving a place or migration facilitate a deeper understanding of self.What is revealed is an honest and effectively uncritical consideration of the traditions and experiences left behind –tinged with both regret and relief–and a new understanding of how and why Mbakam migrated to Belgium, as well as what was happily gained and sadly lost by leaving. Primarily in conversation with her mother and occasionally small groups of community women, Mbakam receives answers to various questions she’d never considered asking before, including the story of her father’s past, her mother’s experiences after her father brought in additional wives, her parents’ experience after her older brother dies at sea, the reaction of the family of Rosine’s “ex-husband” after she ended their arranged marriage and left Cameroon, and whether she has betrayed tradition by marrying a White Belgian.The “two faces” are not duplicitous but speak to the reconciliation and breadth of identities that migration has facilitated for Mbakam. The various revelations and candid discussions expand Mbakam’s understanding of her own woman hood as she speaks of “leaving to see the birth of another part of myself.” Early in the film, she asks her mother if she is aware of her profession as a filmmaker, a career Mbakam realizes she would never have if she had not left for Belgium. To answer Rosine, her mother describes the cinema but perfunctorily notes that she has only gone once. Laterin the film, Mbakam documents an interestingly layered experience as she takes her mother to a screening of Ousmane Sembène’s 1966film,La Noire de (Black Girl), a classic work about migration, colonialism, expectations and exploitation. As Mbakam translates from French to Bamileke for her mother, describing the dialogue while they both commenton the mis-en-scène, the documentary presents a powerful reflection on the disparate experiences of migration. While Sembène’s protagonist, Diouana, is tragically cut off from her past, filmmaker Rosine, documenting life in the moment, is experiencing a fluid continuity of her existence unimaginable to Sembène’s character. Both Diouana and Rosine shared a desire for something beyond their immediate world but, due to the circumstances explored and experienced in the documentary, it is only the filmmaker Mbakam who is able to return home alive and fully herself.