Rosine Mbakam
Birth : 1980-01-01,
History
Rosine Mfetgo Mbakam grew up in a traditional family in Cameroon. She chose cinema very early, training in Yaoundé after learning about the Italian NGO, COE (Centro Orientamento Educativo) where, beginning in 2000 she was introduced to image making, editing and production. While there, she collaborated on and directed several films. After a meeting with Mactar Sylla in 2003, she joined the team of STV (Spectrum Television) where she directed and edited several audiovisual programmes. In 2007, she left Cameroon and enrolled at INSAS in Brussels for a training course. In 2014, she founded with Geoffroy Cernaix, Tandor Productions and directed The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, her first creative documentary. Mbakam’s 2019 Chez Jolie Coiffure, a documentary capturing the day-to-day lives and concerns of immigrant West African women in a small hair salon in Brussels, screened at several festivals and won the Spirit of the Festival Prize at Light Film Festival 2019.
Writer
For Prism, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Brussels-based Rosine Mbakam from Cameroon and Paris-based Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Faso to work together on a film in which the differences in their skin color serves as a departure to explore their experiences with the biased limitations of the medium. Photographic media are technologically and ideologically biased, favoring Caucasian skin. Such white-centricity means that the photographic media assume, privilege and construct whiteness.
Director
For Prism, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Brussels-based Rosine Mbakam from Cameroon and Paris-based Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Faso to work together on a film in which the differences in their skin color serves as a departure to explore their experiences with the biased limitations of the medium. Photographic media are technologically and ideologically biased, favoring Caucasian skin. Such white-centricity means that the photographic media assume, privilege and construct whiteness.
Sound
This film is the portrait of Delphine, a young Cameroonian girl who, after the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father’s parental responsibilities, was raped at the age of 13. She sinks into prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ends up marrying a Belgian man who is three times her age, hoping to find a better life in Europe for her and her daughter. Seven years later, the European dream has faded and her situation has only gotten worse.Delphine, like others, is part of this generation of young African women crushed by our patriarchal societies and left with this Western sexual colonization as the only means of survival. Through her courage and strength, Delphine exposes these patterns of domination that continue to lock up African women.
Director of Photography
This film is the portrait of Delphine, a young Cameroonian girl who, after the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father’s parental responsibilities, was raped at the age of 13. She sinks into prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ends up marrying a Belgian man who is three times her age, hoping to find a better life in Europe for her and her daughter. Seven years later, the European dream has faded and her situation has only gotten worse.Delphine, like others, is part of this generation of young African women crushed by our patriarchal societies and left with this Western sexual colonization as the only means of survival. Through her courage and strength, Delphine exposes these patterns of domination that continue to lock up African women.
Writer
This film is the portrait of Delphine, a young Cameroonian girl who, after the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father’s parental responsibilities, was raped at the age of 13. She sinks into prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ends up marrying a Belgian man who is three times her age, hoping to find a better life in Europe for her and her daughter. Seven years later, the European dream has faded and her situation has only gotten worse.Delphine, like others, is part of this generation of young African women crushed by our patriarchal societies and left with this Western sexual colonization as the only means of survival. Through her courage and strength, Delphine exposes these patterns of domination that continue to lock up African women.
Director
This film is the portrait of Delphine, a young Cameroonian girl who, after the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father’s parental responsibilities, was raped at the age of 13. She sinks into prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ends up marrying a Belgian man who is three times her age, hoping to find a better life in Europe for her and her daughter. Seven years later, the European dream has faded and her situation has only gotten worse.Delphine, like others, is part of this generation of young African women crushed by our patriarchal societies and left with this Western sexual colonization as the only means of survival. Through her courage and strength, Delphine exposes these patterns of domination that continue to lock up African women.
Director
A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.
Director of Photography
Rosine Mbakam is invited to step in Sabine’s small hairdresser’s because it is dangerous in the street. She accepts and pushes in with her camera. Sabine’s stories and the customers’ joys, worries, problems and fears bring depth and life into the premises. At times, it feels like the entire African quarter of Brussels had squeezed in. Laughter abounds, anecdotes and life stories elicit emotions, and a male visitor brings a touch of flirt into the salon.
Director
Rosine Mbakam is invited to step in Sabine’s small hairdresser’s because it is dangerous in the street. She accepts and pushes in with her camera. Sabine’s stories and the customers’ joys, worries, problems and fears bring depth and life into the premises. At times, it feels like the entire African quarter of Brussels had squeezed in. Laughter abounds, anecdotes and life stories elicit emotions, and a male visitor brings a touch of flirt into the salon.
Director of Photography
The return of a young filmmaker to her home country, Cameroon, and her reunion with her mother.
Writer
The return of a young filmmaker to her home country, Cameroon, and her reunion with her mother.
Self
The return of a young filmmaker to her home country, Cameroon, and her reunion with her mother.
Director
The return of a young filmmaker to her home country, Cameroon, and her reunion with her mother.
Director
In this gripping short drama, Domé, a young woman from Gabon who speaks flawless French, is apprehended at the airport on her way into Belgium. She says she’s a French citizen—a businesswoman on her way to meet with suppliers. Border control agents say she’s lying and traveling with a stolen passport. Shut in a bare interrogation chamber, Domé faces dehumanizing treatment from accusers, firmly answering the same questions over and over. While left on her own, she can hear cries coming from the next room. Trying to stave off deportation, Domé asks to use the bathroom. There, she carries out a traditional ritual—one which could cost her her life, or give her a chance at a new one. YOU WILL BE MY ALLY is an early work of Rosine Mbakam’s that already shows the themes which have come to inform the award-winning filmmaker’s career.
Director
As of 1990, many African women fleeing their homes because of the war and political instability in their countries settled down in Belgium. 20 years later, They are haunted by their past. How to express these anxieties that gnaw at them? How to say the unspeakable? What if women other than these refugees started to open the doors of the past?
