Following the screening of Chief!, Jean–Marie Teno will present a short lecture on his vision for documentary film and comment on the conditions for film production in Africa. "Politics is our life," Teno stresses. "We are not sheep but humans. Nonetheless we live in a land where we are forbidden to talk about what is happening around us. Hence I make films, to show that I am no sheep and to encourage my countrymen to think about their own future." (approx. 30 mins)

(Chef!) Using his camera as a pulpit, Teno delivers a "State of the Union" for his beloved Cameroon in this unblinking tour of a nation under the thumb of one overarching dictator-and millions of little ones. The military junta looms in the background, but Teno finds many examples of amateur "chiefs" as well, exploiting a Darwinian survival of the fittest. A teenage boy is nearly lynched by puffed–up village vigilantes; wedding ceremonies underline the fact that, by law, the husband is chief, and the wife thereby enslaved; a respected journalist is imprisoned without trial. Corruption and thuggery from on high trickle down to those below, Teno implies, and over decades seep into the very fabric of society. "People get the government they deserve," one interviewee notes pessimistically (even if that government still draws on the French Civil Code of 1804!). Teno himself is more hopeful: "To me," he says, "we're all chiefs," and all equal.