Films with: Zika, Damouré

Jaguar

One of Jean Rouch's classic ethnofictions, the film follows three young Songhay men from Niger-- Lam Ibrahim, Illo Goudel'ize, and the legendary performer Damouré Zika-- on a journey to the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana). Drawing from his own fieldwork on intra-African migration, the results of which he published in the 1956 book Migrations au Ghana, Rouch collaborated with his three subjects on an improvisational narrative. The four filmed the trip in mid-1950s, and reunited a few years later to record the sound, the participants remembering dialogue and making up commentary. The result is a playful film that finds three African men performing an ethnography of their own culture.

DVD 9898

Petit à petit Little by little /

A classic ethnofiction by Jean Rouch, one of the pivotal figures in the French New Wave and in the history of ethnographic cinema. An innovative semi-improvised feature film about young men from Niger exploring life in Paris and learning to appreciate traditional values back home. Like Jaguar, and starring the three main actors from that film, Petit à Petit is an exercise in what Rouch called ethno-fiction, an idiosyncratic blend of fiction and observational documentary.

DVD 9897