In 1994, two years after the film's release, I watched Jean-Marie Teno's Afrique, je te plumerai in a tiny, packed cinema at the Images d’Ailleurs Festival in Paris. At a time when, in the early stages of my PhD research, I was viewing all the African films I could access, it was the first work by Jean-Marie Teno that I stumbled across, unprepared and unsuspecting. To this day, I remember the bombshell that was the film. During the final scenes, I was aware in the darkness of the cinema of a presence standing waiting in the aisle. As the lights came up after the final credits, this presence took the stage for the Q&A: Teno. In all honesty, I remember little of the ensuing discussion, reeling as I was from this stark awakening to chapters of colonial history completely unbeknown to me at the time, delivered, what is more, from a radically different perspective that pulled no punches. Stunned as I was too by the force and originality of the film's completely unorthodox form, which resembled nothing I had ever seen before. A documentary? Every facet of the film could only be described as challenging. And I love nothing more in cinema than to be challenged.

My passion for Jean-Marie Teno's work was born.

This passion accompanied me throughout my PhD and the subsequent writing of my book, Africa Shoots Back, in which I devoted considerable space to discussing Afrique, je te plumerai and Teno's later fiction film, Clando. It is a passion that has not left me since as I have continued over the years to assiduously follow and focus on Teno's work as I write, give papers in seminars and conferences, and teach.