Film Screening: "Aristotle's Plot"

Join us for a special screening of "Aristotle's Plot"

About the Film 

"Aristotle’s Plot" is a hybrid satire: partly normal feature, partly a reflection on the (poorly) state of production and distribution African cinema. Cameron Bailey (Toronto Catalogus) says it will undoubtedly be ‘the most talked-about African film of the year’.

Film Description 

In an African city, a gang of youths hangs around the Cinema Africa, where they regularly treat themselves to a large dose of US action movies. They have even adopted the names of their film heroes: Van Damme, Bruce Lee, Nikita, and their leader is called Cinema. One day an enthusiastic film-maker makes his entrance and with official government aid tries to screen more national and African films. When it becomes clear that he hardly gets any support and that the youths even sabotage him, he turns into a vigilante for local film culture. 

About the Filmmaker 

Jean-Pierre Bekolo emerged as a promising African filmmaker in the early 1990s. He embarked on his cinematic journey while studying physics and chemistry at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon and continued to develop a rich, multilayered and complex filmography including such classics as Aristotle’s Plot (1996), Les Saignantes (2005), and Le président (2013); exploring newer terrains with Naked Reality (2016), Miraculous Weapons (2017) and Nous Les Noirs (2021); and more recently producing a filmic adaptation of Djaili Amadou Amal’s novel Walaandé, the Art of Sharing a Husband (2023), directed by Thierry Ntamack. In addition to filmmaking, Bekolo’s artistic practice navigates the worlds of the gallery and the museum, of knowledge production and dissemination as well as collective action and organizing.