Led by artist Guy Woueté and Co, WAKA Cinema is a meeting place for artists, researchers and the public. It establishes connections between local and global histories and raises questions about power, migration, racism, capitalism and resistance. In this way, film is not seen merely as an art form, but as a way to come together, share knowledge and strengthen communities.

In the summer, WAKA Cinema took place in Njombe-Penja (Cameroon), and now we are bringing this programme to Aalst.

FILM1
Yves Roland Yeungap, J’accuse, 2017, CM, HD, 8’33”

J’accuse is a posthumous film pamphlet, balancing between apocalyptic prophecy and political action. It paints a portrait of a disillusioned Cameroon: once full of promise, now impoverished, burdened with debt and steeped in clan and authoritarian rule. While official rhetoric predicts an ‘emergence’ by 2035, a hopeless youth chooses exile.

FILM 2
Jozef Devillé and Pablo Eekman, Paradigma, 2024, BE, DCP, 104′

Composed exclusively of archive footage, Paradigma reveals that the problems we face today are not new. The many consequences of climate change, the erosion of trust in democracy and the proliferation of disinformation have existed for decades. Paradigma is a cinematic essay that explores our collective inability to tackle these challenges at their root and shows how Western societies are stuck in an endless loop of repetition.

FILM 3
Lionel Maock, J’ai trouvé l’amour, 2025, 13’,

J’ai trouvé l’amour is a documentary that immerses the viewer in the lives of the inhabitants of a village in Haute-Sanaga, in the Central Region of Cameroon. In a gesture of intergenerational solidarity, they come together to rebuild the walls of the house of two 90-year-olds who had been forced to sleep under the open sky.

ABOUT WAKA CINEMA

WAKA Cinema is a pillar of WAKA Studio and therefore it operates on the same basis: a “factory of decolonial imagination” that uses art to question social, economic and political realities. Where WAKA Studio in Njombé-Penja (Cameroon) explores the links between labour and education in the context of colonial monoculture plantations, WAKA Cinema extends this research to the world of moving images.

Film functions here as a medium for collective learning and remembrance, a place where personal stories and historical structures intersect. It is a space where cinema is not only screened, but also deconstructed and reconstructed: as an instrument to challenge dominant narratives and imagine alternative futures.