Science Fiction and masquerade in Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes (2005) A cinematic way out of Africa’s declining future

In the feature film Les Saignantes (2005) by Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Africa looks allegorically at itself through its cinema. The film features two women reacting against the postcolonial power-structure of commandment and the phallocentric gaze that shapes the imagery of Africa. They do so by applying a masquerade strategy central to feminist film theory. In setting its narrative in the future and in a dying universe, the film functions as a mirror enlarging the current state of affairs in postcolonial Africa and warning for its continuation. An in-depth analysis of Les Saignantes shows how the use of imagination can alter ethnologizing gazes on Africa and how it can deal with political appropriations through a strategy of the female gaze and an ancient ritual called Mevungu.