This document is disturbing, tho highly interesting and rare. According to Jean Rouch, we are witnessing an ethnopsychiatry document. The people involved in this document are Songhay from Gao, in Mali. But at that time it was part of the french colonies. They hence come from the Sahel, a different environment. The Songhay are animist/muslims, at that time, few of them had contacts with the European colonialists, European organisation, before coming to the then Gold Coast. In Gao, one can still witness the holley ceremony where dead spirits are called. The case of the Aukas is specific to these Songhay abroad, it appeared after the difficult encounter with the « mad masters ». So let's meet the Aukas of the governor, the doctor's wife, the sergent, the train...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPS16T0eaMs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1HEDQXoA4Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj5tWddNAwI&feature=related
About jean Rouch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Rouch (31 May 1917 - 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
He began his long association with African subjects in 1941 after working as civil engineer supervising a construction project in Niger. However, shortly afterwards he returned to France to participate in the Resistance. After the war, he did a brief stint as a journalist with Agence France-Presse before returning to Africa where he become an influential anthropologist and sometimes controversial filmmaker.
He is considered as one the pioneers of Nouvelle Vague, of visual anthropology and the father of ethnofiction. Rouch's films mostly belonged to the cinéma vérité school – a term that Edgar Morin used in a 1960 France-Observateur article referring to Dziga Vertov's Kinopravda. His best known film, one of the central works of the Nouvelle Vague, is Chronique d'un été (1961) which he filmed with sociologist Edgar Morin and in which he portrays the social life of contemporary France. Throughout his career, he used his camera to report on life in Africa. Over the course of five decades, he made almost 120 films.
He died in an automobile accident in February 2004, some 16 kilometres from the town of Birni-N'Konni, Niger.
For those who want to know more about Jean Rouch you can check this link in english
http://der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPS16T0eaMs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1HEDQXoA4Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj5tWddNAwI&feature=related
About jean Rouch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Rouch (31 May 1917 - 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
He began his long association with African subjects in 1941 after working as civil engineer supervising a construction project in Niger. However, shortly afterwards he returned to France to participate in the Resistance. After the war, he did a brief stint as a journalist with Agence France-Presse before returning to Africa where he become an influential anthropologist and sometimes controversial filmmaker.
He is considered as one the pioneers of Nouvelle Vague, of visual anthropology and the father of ethnofiction. Rouch's films mostly belonged to the cinéma vérité school – a term that Edgar Morin used in a 1960 France-Observateur article referring to Dziga Vertov's Kinopravda. His best known film, one of the central works of the Nouvelle Vague, is Chronique d'un été (1961) which he filmed with sociologist Edgar Morin and in which he portrays the social life of contemporary France. Throughout his career, he used his camera to report on life in Africa. Over the course of five decades, he made almost 120 films.
He died in an automobile accident in February 2004, some 16 kilometres from the town of Birni-N'Konni, Niger.
For those who want to know more about Jean Rouch you can check this link in english
http://der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php