Thérèse Sita-Bella
Journalist and director of "Tam-tam à Paris", a pioneer of African cinema
Died in 2006-02-27
On screen : Tam-tam à Paris (1963)
Who are they?
Thérèse Sita-Bella, born Thérèse Bella Mbida among the Beti of southern Cameroon, was a Cameroonian journalist and film director who died in Yaoundé on 27 February 2006. Educated by Catholic missionaries, she took her baccalaureate in Yaoundé and went to Paris in the 1950s to continue her studies, turning to journalism there. She returned to Cameroon in 1967 and worked at the Ministry of Information.
What made them famous
In 1963 she directed "Tam-tam à Paris", a thirty-minute documentary following a tour of Cameroon's national dance troupe in the French capital. Often cited as the first film by a woman from sub-Saharan Africa, it was shown in 1969 at the first Week of African Cinema in Ouagadougou, the forerunner of FESPACO.
Key facts
- In Paris she helped found the monthly "La Vie africaine" in 1959, as its only African woman writer, and became a correspondent for Deutsche Welle, Voice of America and the BBC.
- She was also the first Cameroonian woman to fly an aeroplane.
- A hall at Cameroon's Ministry of Communication and a cultural venue in Yaoundé bear her name, and Eugénie Metala's documentary "Sita Bella la première" paid tribute to her in 2025.