Cameroonian actor and director Alphonse Beni, nicknamed the “Black Ninja”, died on March 12, 2023, at the age of 77. Two years ago, he was rewarded for his entire career at the Festival Ecrans Noirs. A pioneer, passionate, and prolific with a singular career.
In the 1970s, it was in France that Alphonse Beni made a lot of films as an actor, films between eroticism and soft porn. Then, he returned to Cameroon and multiplied the productions he produced and for which he was also on the bill. There, it is the period musical films and especially films of action.
One of his biggest successes is Cameroon Connection, in 1985. He is Inspector Baïko who is investigating a murder and goes to meet Bruce Le. Not Bruce Lee, the martial arts movie legend who died a decade earlier, but one of his best-known lookalikes of the period. A film in which even appears Paco Rabanne, a famous Spanish couturier died on February 3.
Alphonse Beni is also the one who brought to Cameroon Richard Harrison, an American icon of b series, these low-budget feature films, peplums, historical fiction, and cowboy films. This is the time when Cameroon has dozens of cinemas.