IDFA 2023 Book Recommendation: Reel Resistance
Filmmakers and artists in IDFA 2023 official selection will receive the book Reel Resistance as a present from IDFA. Others can buy the book online or in Amsterdam from Athenaeum book shop (Spui 14-16) with a 10% reduction*. On November 12 at 10.00 in ITA Studio 1, there will be a Talk with the authors, Jean-Marie Teno and Melissa Thackway, followed by a book signing.
IDFA's Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia's comment on the book:
Jean-Marie Teno was probably the very first Sub-Saharan African documentary filmmaker I ever heard of. The continent seemed to be out there with great fiction directors like Sembène, Harun, Kaboré, Cissé… but documentary always seemed to be obscured and invisible. I barely heard of Faye or Maldoror growing up as a cinephile. It was only those fiction films from Africa that were celebrated by Cannes or Berlinale that the world got to read about, and sometimes, even rarely, watch.
The work of Teno was not only exceptionally original and different, politically as well as aesthetically. It also was a first window to many, including myself, into that fascinating other cinema. It was a window that contributed to more and more curiosity, and we all started digging, searching—for what we were not told about, for what European cinema gatekeepers did not deem fit for the world.
In Reel Resistance, Teno and Melissa Thackway carry us through the biography of Teno, only for us to discover a journey of thinking cinema, thinking Africa, thinking colonial history, liberation, and artistic originality—as these all together are the cinema that Teno defended and made! With Thackway's clarity of vision and structure, Reel Resistance is a journey through African documentary film history, as much as it is a journey into the experience of one exceptional filmmaker. It is a necessary reading for everybody, a great opportunity to learn about the process behind the final films, the struggle to be oneself, and the integrity of the act of making films in the face of extreme pressure to adapt and conform, in the face of a film culture that is deeply colonial, yet fails to explore that aspect of its existence until today.
As for readers from that part of our world that used to be called the Third World, this is an essential reading and a deeply inspiring trip—not towards doing what Teno did or did not do, but towards finding one’s own voice, and learning to exist without a permit.
*Use this code to purchase this book with a 10% discount at Athenaeum Bookhandel (Spui 14-15) or online. The code is also valid on all English-language books. Code: IDFA2023 (valid until 01/01/2024).
