Cameroun

This film, made by the French government while Cameroon was still under French trusteeship, shows the dances of people of the southern provinces of Akonolinga, Yaounde, Doume, and Batouri. Details of clothing, ornaments, hair styles, and the xylophone that provides the music for the dances are shown. The first dance, in Akonolinga, features young girls in what is possibly an initiation dance. They wear vegetable fiber skirts, silver arm and leg ornaments and European elfin stocking caps. In Yaounde the dancers wear feather headdresses, clumps of sound-producing reeds around their necks and their bodies are painted. The women dancers in Doume beat long stick rattles on the ground as they move rhythmically. The teeth of one woman are filed into points. In Batouri the dancers wear cloth and leaf loin cloths. One woman is streaked with chalk of ritual significance and the extensive cicatrices on her torso can still be seen beneath the chalk.