The Bloodettes

The Bloodettes is a dystopian futuristic political film by Afro-futuristic African filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo. As it is well documented, Bekolo’s work challenges conventional cinematic norms and forms – such as the fiction and non-fiction binary, reshaping African narratives and perceptions through experimental and amorphous storytelling that engages and provokes audiences. The Bloodettes was released in 2005 with the film set twenty years in the future. The film, even with a present-day critical lens, is a daring, thought-provoking sci-fi erotic thriller that does not shy away from controversy or subverting expectations; it is a film made very much ahead of its time. With an indelible original score and soundtrack, a variety of lighting schemes and striking color palettes, the film through two sex workers as characters who interact with government officials and politicians, comments on the corruption of these politicians, the police and state as well as the public at-large in Cameroon. 

The critique of the film within the narrative does not make use of the historical or colonial framework to address the factors responsible for the political plight of Africans but directs this at Africans themselves. Rejecting African Afro-pessimism, the film spotlights the role Africans have played in a socio-political system that is many times broken, the filmmaker using Cameroon at the time as a case study. Also, notable, at the very core of the film, even if understated and sometimes counterintuitive, is the theme of female empowerment, highlighting the power women are able to hold over men and the weakness and fragility of even the so-called powerful men as a consequence. The futility of the male intention to objectify women in order to reaffirm their supposed control over them is also explored, as is African lore and mythology about the power women are able to wield and their overall strength and defiance, underlining their critical significance in any socio-political African discourse. 

Badewa Ajibade
Guest curator