Abstract- Francis Arsène Fogue Kuate

Media and society in Cameroon: from the French Period to the beginning of the XXIst century

Through the Audiovisual Professional Training Centre (APTC) of Ekounou (Yaounde) this paper addresses the problematic of the contribution of technical and professional centres to the development of media art in Africa. It argues that, by means of the scientific and technical knowledge that is given to its trainers in an empirical way, the APTC contributes towards both the transfer of technologies between the North and the South and the development of media art in Africa. This international centre that aims at training media practitioners in the areas of images set-up, film direction, production, montage, sound engineering, enables Africans in general and Cameroonians in particular to master leading-edge technology in the domain of media art. At the end of their professional training, some graduates of the school are recruited by the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), the state corporation in the domain of audiovisual communication in Cameroon while other put their know-how at the disposal of several private audiovisual media in operation since the codification of the audiovisual arena liberalization in 2000. Besides, with the creation of that training centre, an amazing quantitative and qualitative improvement has been observed in the area of movies making in Cameroon. Many short-length, media-length and feature-length films have been designed and produced locally. Through an analytic and diachronic approach this paper looks at the involvement of The APTC to the media art evolution in Cameroon.