Tjúba Tén

Shot in Suriname, Tjuba Ten / The Wet Season, has all the ingredients of an ethnographic film: the women’s chores (weaving, cooking…) and the men’s activities (hunting preparations, handling the pirogue…), rituals (song, dance…). Whether staged or not, these scenes are not intended to represent life in a Suriname village, but rather to bring out the tics and quirks typical of a cinematographic genre, to unravel the codes of representation and entertain us with this joyful iconoclastic undertaking. The film accumulates an excessive number of errors, filming accidents. Taken to the extreme, the ethnographic approach is inverted and revealed in its true light, that of home moviemaking. The academic presentation creates a family film for the natives. Hence, the film’s double title. One only ever films oneself.
Yann Lardeau