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REDCAT presents First-Person Africa: An Evening with film director Jean-Marie Téno

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November 7, Los Angeles--REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, showcases a rare Los Angeles appearance by award-winning Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno on Monday, November 28, 2005, at 8:00 p.m. Chef ! and the Los Angeles Premiere of Le Mariage d'Alex are the next films by Téno in the Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

Jean-Marie Téno has directed 10 documentaries and the award-winning feature ClandoClandestine, 1996). Prominently featured at this summer's Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Afrique, je te plumerai (, 1992) and (The Colonial Misunderstanding, 2004), Téno returns to Los Angeles appearing in person at REDCAT with a challenging double bill that explores the complexity of issues facing contemporary Africa. The French newspaper Libération said that in Téno's films "one hears the voice of Africa expressing itself in the first person and taking the risk of subjectivity, without using the excuse of poverty or relying on folklorism."

Téno, born in 1954 in Famleng, Cameroon, studied communications at the University of Valenciennes, France, and began his career as a film critic for the magazine Bwana. In 1985, he became an editor at FR3 (French National Television) where he worked for 12 years. In 1983 Téno made his first short documentary film, Schubbah, and has continued filmmaking, moving between documentary and fiction. Jean-Marie Téno will be at REDCAT in person.

Le Mariage d'Alex (, 45 min., 2002) is a disturbing document about the resurgence of polygamy among young educated Africans. A friend of a filmmaker asks him to make a video of his second wedding. Alex, the groom, goes to his in-laws' to bring home his second wife accompanied, according to tradition, by his first wife and childhood sweetheart, Elise. Josephine, the young bride, leaves her parents to begin a new life. From the preparations for the wedding to the awkward end of the festivities, the director films the unfolding of an afternoon during which the lives of three people change dramatically. "I was concerned about respecting people's choices and didn't want to be accusatory," Téno recalls. "I positioned myself as an observer, capturing the reality of the event--the official speeches and traditional rituals, as well as the unspoken pain that was palpable throughout the evening."

Chef ! (Chief!, 61 min., 1999) is also a first-person documentary that begins as Téno films a festival in his home village, but ends up engaging with street violence, political repression and the rampant oppression of women--all positioned within a post-colonial context. A young boy, guilty of petty theft, is almost lynched by a mob. In a wedding ceremony, the bride learns the rules of obedience. And a highly respected journalist is imprisoned without trial for writing about the health of the President. Connecting these seemingly unrelated incidents, " Chef ! is a personal reflection on the current state of Cameroonian society," says Téno, "with its hierarchies, inequalities and lack of respect for human rights--all by-products of a dictatorship."

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets are $8 for the general public, $6 for students with valid ID. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office-located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800, or by clicking here.

This screening is made possible in part by the generous gifts from the Jack H. Skirball Foundation and The Herb Alpert Foundation.

Upcoming Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, Fall 2005:
Monday, November 14: Pours Down Like Silver: Films by Phil Solomon
Monday, November 28: First-Person Africa: An Evening with Jean-Marie Téno
Monday, December 5: Ellen Bruno: Stories of Death and Survival
Monday, December 12: Joseph Cornell: Film Constructions and Fantasies

REDCAT benefits from an endowment created through the generosity of The Walt Disney Company; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Robert B. Egelston; Lee and Lawrence J. Ramer; and Dorothy R. Sherwood.

REDCAT's 2005-06 season programming is generously supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation; American Composers Forum of Los Angeles; The Annenberg Foundation; Anonymous; Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund; California Community Foundation; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation (Corporate matching gift); CEMAT (Centri Musicali Attrezzati, Rome); City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; CONACULTA; Margit Sperling Cotsen and Lloyd Cotsen; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Delphi Capital Management, Inc.; e-flux; Étant Donnés, The French-American Fund for the Visual Arts, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange; The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE; French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Harriett and Richard Gold; Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg; Elyse and Stanley Grinstein; Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater; IIC (Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles); The Japan Foundation Performing Arts JAPAN; La Colección Jumex; kurimanzutto; L.A. Louver Gallery, Inc.; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Steve Martin; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; E. Nakamichi Foundation; Phaedrus Foundation; Vicki Reynolds Pepper and Murray Pepper; The Puffin Foundation, Inc.; V. Joy Simmons; The Skirball Foundation; SONORA, in collaboration with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and White Cube Gallery, London.

As CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in the Los Angeles region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT is a center for experimentation, discovery and charged civic discourse.

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