FSC Works

untitled Mafuo’Ka project

Lilia Kilburn

The term Cameroon first came into use from the Portuguese camarões (shrimp), after Portuguese traders had earlier witnessed a seasonal swarm of lepidophthalmus turneranus in this area which made the water thick with crustaceans. Like colonial settlers to New England who arrived during a bumper crop of fragaria virginiana (wild strawberries), Europeans in Cameroon believed this abundance would always be there for their taking. When Nkemngong died, he left a note in his manuscript: “Create a more rural environment with imagery and proverbs and riddles and ecology.” The guards made us stare at the wall, and we knew that just beyond it there was another wall, which a French billionaire had built to block the sea. A film about landscapes and what they refuse us.

Cinema nyanga njangi

Lilia Kilburn

Cinema nyanga njangi traces the edges of a contested region, variably called Southern Cameroons (after the British colony it once was), Anglophone Cameroon (because it houses Cameroon’s English-speaking minority) or Ambazonia (by separatists who seek its statehood). A group of artists tries to practice the principles of njangi (collective decision-making and resource-sharing) in their efforts to reflect the territory’s nyanga (beauty / style / grace).