Comité du film Éthnographique

A fortuitous meeting, late one afternoon, in the garden of the Tuileries, of one or two cameras, a tape recorder, and three cameramen/directors, Raymond Depardon, Jean Rouch, and Philippe Costantini.

"Tourou et Bitti", an eight minute documentary concerning a ritual in Niger, is yet another example of Rouch's excellence in creating documentaries which surpass the conventional documentary format. Just as frightening and fascinating as "Les maîtres fous", this one goes straight into the roots of ancient African cultures, in which music has an hypnotic effect, being at the same time an exorcism and a public show. Both the female and the male dancers are almost deities about to be unleashed... Spectral and humanitarian.

This documentary offers an overview of French scientific research in Africa French scientific research in Africa: hydrology, botany, biology oil palm and coconut cultivation, industrial sea fishing and and urban planning. Film montage taking stock of scientific research research in Africa, mainly in the fields of hydrology hydrology, botany, biology and agriculture. The film is a compilation of extracts from several short films made by Jean Rouch in Mali, Niger and Côte d'Ivoire between 1962 and 1963: Abidjan, port de pêche, Le Mil, Le Cocotier and Le Palmier à l'huile. l'huile.

Etnographic documentary about lion hunting in Africa.

The title of this film translates literally as 'to put on a hori,' a hori being the Songhay term for ceremony of festival. Here it is used to refer to a ganandi, literally 'to make dance' This film concerns two women whom the zima [priest] had diagnosed some months before as being ill through possession by spirits. In the meantime, their families have gathered together the resources to pay for the musicians, dancers, and the priest himself to put on an initiation dance lasting seven days This is a film of documentation, simply recording various moments in the progress of the ceremony, without any form of explanation, neither in intertitle cards nor in voice-over. (Paul Henley, The Adventure of the Real)

In February 1974, Pam Sambo Zima, the oldest of the priests of possession in Niamey, Niger, died at the age of seventy-plus years. In his backyard, the followers from the possession cult symbolically break the dead priest's ritual vases and cry for the deceased while dividing up the clothes of the divinities.

Commemorative celebrations of the independence of the Republic of Niger filmed in December 1961 and 1962.

In front of Jean Rouch's camera, Germaine Dieterlen recalls her ethnographic itinerary, at the Musée de l'Homme, in Mali and in the Paris of the 1930s.

In 1972, the Dogon of the Bandiagara cliff in Mali celebrated the funeral of Anaï Dolo, head of the Bongo Masks Society, who died at the age of 122. On this occasion, the large Bongo mask, is erected and for twenty days, family members, elders, men from neighbouring villages purify the village.

A portrait of Zomo, the second of Damouré Zika’s many children. Employed at the zoo of the National Museum of Niger in Niamey, he offers us a tour, showing us the animals he takes care of. Then, when the work is finished, he invites us to an impromptu concert by “Jeunesse Gawey,” the “popular music” orchestra he forms with his brothers and sisters, who sing and dance for us pretty songs about their lives, their family, and Nigerien youth.

The young goat herders from the cliff of Bandiagara practice on the stone drums of their ancestors. An ethnomusicological film experiment describing the subtle plays of the right and left hand of Dogon drummers.

Germaine Dierterlen talks about Dogon mythology at a conference on the Bandiagara cliffs. The Songo canopy is a sacred site in Bandiagara. Its walls are covered with paintings depicting the different phases of creation. A little further on, in a cave near the village of Bongo, symposium participants are discussing the Tellem, the people who lived in the houses built into the cliffs before the arrival of the Dogon. The archaeological remains and migratory movements of these two peoples are discussed.

A group of factory workers in post-independence Mozambique performs a ritual of song describing their work in South African gold mines, and decrying the evils of apartheid.

A ritual vase, the hampi, is placed in the center of the Musée de plein air de la République du Niger in Niamey, during a ritual ceremony featuring possession dances. With this film, Jean Rouch continues his ethnological and cinematographic study of Songhay ritual objects. He demonstrates that, in a particular context, the transfer of a hampi vase to a museum requires the organization of a ritual ceremony to obtain the gods' approval. At the time, however, reservations about filming a possession dance for the opening of a shrine in a museum made the move "questionable from a museological point of view".

Lightning struck the hut of a Fulani shepherd near a village of settled fishermen, Ganghel, in Niger. A yenendi, a purification ceremony to obtain "water from the sky but not fire from the sky", is organized, with Sorko priests, ritual musicians and dancers, and the faithful from Niamey. The musicians call on Dongo, god of storms, and his brother Kirey, god of lightning. To the rhythm of the orchestra, a man goes into a trance, becoming Dongo's horse and at the same time the riding genie. Then a woman is possessed by Kirey. When the riding gods have mastered their horses, the gods visit the men. Dongo purifies the lightning-struck land and the oldest fisherman prepares the purification vessel, addressing Dongo.

When the male nurse Damouré Zika talks about AIDS with his two friends Lam and Tallou, under the admiring eye of his own wife Lobo, who is a nurse's aide, it is because he believes that AIDS is a "disease of love that can only be conquered by love." And this right to love has only one passport for the moment: the condom, on whose use he gives an incredible demonstration.

In Sangha, through the window of her house, Germaine greets Djamgouno, her main informant. He then translates for her a conversation she has with a half-blind old man. She recounts her memories of a past party at which Amadigné worked with her as an informant. Later, in front of the cliff, Germaine, Djamgouno and Pangalé are sitting on rocks, and Germaine talks about the many caves that can be visited by climbing small spelunking ladders. Rouch intervenes during the interview, asking the protagonists about the settlement of the cliff by the Dogon, who learned from the Tellem how to climb the cliff. Rouch then asks about the Tellem's predecessors who lived there 2,400 years ago. Germaine admits the ignorance of researchers on the subject, and Rouch concludes by joking about the new task that now falls to Germaine Dieterlen.

A Mauritanian worker, Sidi, works in France. Like most immigrant workers, he is employed to do the most difficult and dangerous jobs. Sidi and his comrades are exploited systematically and permanently, as much by their employers as by their own countrymen who are constantly able to offer false working papers, slums where immigrants buy at high cost their right to sleep. But faced with racism and economic exploitation, immigrant workers communicate, organise...

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, a group of Haitians in Paris undertake a voodoo ritual in front of Les Invalides, to reconcile the spirits of Napoleon Bonaparte and Toussaint L’Overture, the Haitian revolutionary who died as a prisoner of the French Emperor.

Jean Rouch filmed this loving and humorous portrait of anthropologist and filmmaker Margaret Mead in September 1977 while he was a guest of the first Margaret Mead Film Festival. As both a friend and colleague, Rouch reveals a glimpse of the legendary Mead in her later years.