Festival Films Femmes Afrique 2020 - Rosine Mbakam : Chez jolie coiffure

Films Femmes Afrique

Rosine Mbakam

Chez jolie coiffure

Cameroon - 2019 - 71 min - Documentary

Longs-métrages hors compétition

Feature films out of competition

Synopsis

Sabine est rentrée clandestinement en Belgique. Elle découvre le Matonge, le quartier africain où elle peut trouver du travail au noir. Aujourd’hui, gérante du salon « Jolie coiffure », Sabine donne du travail aux autres jeunes filles qui arrivent, en attendant que sa situation se régularise. Accueillantes, souriantes, joyeuses, Sabine et les filles travaillent 13 à 14 heures par jour, debout et sans arrêt.

Sabine et les autres coiffeuses affrontent avec courage le regard de touristes de tout âge qui regardent et photographient ces femmes comme des objets en vitrine et nous renvoient à toute une histoire coloniale et post-coloniale.

Sabine entered Belgium clandestinely. Her migratory journey began in Cameroon in the recruitment agency for a housekeeper in Lebanon. After a stay there, where she was reduced to quasi slavery, she left for Syria, then Greece, and she finally arrived in Belgium.

Sabine discovered Matongé, the African neighborhood where she can find work underground. Today, Sabine, manages the Jolie Coiffure Salon, providing work to other girls who have just arrived, until her own situation is legalized. Welcoming, smiling, happy, Sabine and the young women work 13 to 14 hours a day standing, nonstop. In this 8m2 salon, Sabine structures the workload, giving tasks to other hairdressers. At the same time, she talks with her clients, advises and finds solutions for their hair problems or even their personal problems. Furthermore, the police patrol with their dogs carry out raids in the neighborhood randomly rounding up undocumented migrants. Sabine and the other hairdressers courageously face the gaze of tourists of all ages who gawk at and photograph these women as if objects in the window—a return back to a colonial and post-colonial history.

Biographie | Biography

Rosine Mfetgo Mbakam a grandi au Cameroun. Elle choisit très tôt le cinéma et se forme à Yaoundé grâce aux équipes de l’ONG italienne COE où elle est initiée à l’image, au montage et à la réalisation. Elle collabore et réalisé plusieurs films pour cette structure avant d’intégrer en 2003 l’équipe de STV. Elle s’installe à Bruxelles en 2007 pour suivre la formation réalisation à l’INSAS. En 2014 elle fonde avec Geoffroy Cernaix Tândor Productions et réalise Les deux visages d’une femmes bamiléké, son premier documentaire de création qui sort sur les écrans en 2017.

Rosine Mfetgo Mbakam grew up in a traditional family in Cameroon. She chose cinema very early, training in Yaoundé thanks to the Italian NGO organization 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.

With her diploma in hand, she plans her first short film, You will be my ally and co-directs a portrait of the Congolese artist Freddy Tsimba Mavambu with Mirko Popovitch for the ASBL AFRICALIA. In 2014 she founded with Geoffroy Cernaix, Tandor Productions and directed The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman her first creative documentary released in 2017. 

Bande-annonce Chez jolie coiffure from Tandor production on Vimeo.