Introduction
Opening Night: Moi, un noir
April 7th: La pyramide humaine, Jaguar, Petit à petit
April 8th: Cocorico, monseiur poulet!, Madame l'eauTranscribed by Jamie Berthe
INTRODUCTION
The following documents are transcriptions of the Jean Rouch retrospective held at New York University in April of 2000: "Chronicles of African Modernities." The event featured screenings of and discussions about six of Rouch's best known ethnofictions – Moi, un noir (1957), La pyramide humaine (1959), Jaguar (1957-1967), Petit à petit (1968), Cocorico, monsieur poulet! (1974), and Madame l'eau (1992). Covering a broad span of time in Rouch's prolific filmmaking career, each of these films contains an extraordinary amount of insight into the complexities, inconsistencies and realities of very distinct moments in recent African history. This brief introduction is designed to help situate "Chronicles of African Modernities" within the context of Rouch's career as well as give readers a bit of insight into the novelty of this material.
Trained in Paris as an engineer at l'École des Ponts et Chaussées, Rouch initially found himself in Niger in 1941, after requesting to be sent to the French colonies in order to escape the oppressive political landscape of occupied France. As an engineer working for the Travaux Publics, Rouch did not arrive in Niger with any ethnographic ambitions. But as Rouch explains in the post-screening discussion of Jaguar, not long after his arrival, a young man by the name of Damouré Zika opened the door to the mysterious world of possession rituals for him. That moment marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two men and sparked what would develop into a lasting interest in possession rituals on the part of Rouch. It was not until he returned to West Africa after the war, however, that Rouch first tried his hand at filmmaking. The remarkable story of his training in film technique can also be found in the post-screening discussion of Jaguar.
"Chronicles of African Modernities" gave its New York audience the uncommon opportunity to see six of Rouch's feature length films shot in West Africa. [1] Moi, un noir and La pyramide humaine are both set in Abidjan and deal with the cultural collisions and unfortunate realities that make up day to day life in colonial Africa. Jaguar, Petit à petit, Cocorico, monsieur poulet! and Madame l'eau are films that were born from the collaboration between Rouch and his African filmmaking partners, Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahima Dia and Tallou Mouzourane. This group - also known as Dalarouta (an acronym created out of the first syllables of each of their names) - made films together for over 30 years. The Dalarouta films featured in the retrospective are markedly less serious in tone than Moi, un noir and La pyramide humaine, but they manage nonetheless to address the complicated nature of the relationship between Africa and the West, while providing a space for a West African dialogue between its colonial past and an uncertain future.
While Rouch has spent ample time in the past crediting his sources of inspiration, [2] and although he does discuss briefly the influence that surrealism and the films of Robert Flaherty had on his work, these transcriptions are useful in revealing the extent to which Rouch was guided by an utterly unique aesthetic. One walks away from this material with the distinct impression that the principals of shared anthropology and participatory cinema were not simply part of Rouch's approach to filmmaking but, rather, that the desire to share the experience of cinema was part of his approach to people and to life in general. Indeed, throughout "Chronicles of African Modernities," Rouch rarely takes credit for the genesis of his films. He tells the story of how Damouré Zika came up with the idea for Jaguar, about how Oumarou Ganda approached him regarding Moi, un noir and how Lam Ibrahima Dia's love of white cows served as the inspiration for a film that was (sadly) never finished, La vache merveilleuse. Rouch often commences the post-screening discussions by stating that he and the actors in these films (who were, in fact, his friends) had no idea where the film was going; they had no real script to speak of, just an idea, a camera, and the desire to make a different kind of film. And it is through these discussions that one begins to comprehend the degree to which Rouch and his African friends were inventing and re-inventing themselves through film – discovering Africa, each other, and themselves as they went along. The sense of spontaneity, improvisation, shared discoveries, and adventure that emerge through both the films and discussions featured in this retrospective are evidence of Rouch's long and circuitous path towards self-discovery, and also of the way he interacted with and approached the world around him.
The Songhay people with whom Rouch spent much of his adult life have numerous proverbs but there is one that Paul Stoller cites in his book The Cinematic Griot, that seems particularly fitting in regards to Jean Rouch: "Baani fondo a si ku – The sure path is never too long" (Stoller, 13). Learning about the long journey that constitutes Rouch's path is necessary if one hopes to fully understand his films. The more familiar the trajectory of his filmmaking career becomes, the more able we are to appreciate the distances that he traveled throughout his lifetime – metaphorically, cinematically, psychologically and physically – in order to achieve such a significant and idiosyncratic body of work. And while these transcriptions certainly prove useful in educating us about Rouch's journey, it should not be forgotten that what you are about to read is more like a conversation between friends than an academic event. A great deal of the warmth, humor, and affection shared between the participants will be lost in these transcriptions. For anyone curious about the kind of relationships Rouch inspired, the videos of this retrospective are much more telling than sterile words on a page. You must imagine the moments when Rouch and the panel members exchange smiles, laughs, and affectionate gestures. You must infuse your reading of this material with the life, humor, and love that is visible in Rouch's films.
Faye Ginsburg, Manthia Diawara, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Steven Feld, and Paul Stoller participate in the discussions with Rouch throughout this event. Faye Ginsburg studied under Rouch and is currently a David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University, in addition to being the Director of the Graduate Program in Culture and Media, director of The Center for Media, Culture and History, and co-Director for The Center for Religion and Media. Manthia Diawara is a professor in the Comparative Literature Department at N.Y.U. and Director of N.Y.U.'s Institute of Afro-American Affairs and the Africana Studies Program. He also directed the German-produced documentary about Jean Rouch called Rouch in Reverse. Jean-Paul Colleyn currently teaches at l'École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales in France where he is an active member of the Center for African Studies. Steven Feld is a professor of Anthropology and Music at the University of New Mexico and his books include, Jean Rouch: Ciné-Ethnography. Finally, Paul Stoller is a professor of Anthropology at West Chester University. His work, like Rouch's, has largely revolved around the Songhay population in West Africa. Referred to by many in the area as "Rouch's son," Stoller is the author of an exceptional book called The Cinematic Griot, which examines the relationship between Rouch's ethnographic research and the films he shot in West Africa.
Translations from the French are my own, unless otherwise specified. Footnotes and/or bracketed comments are remarks or translations that I have added to the original text. Parenthetical comments are intended to give the reader a more comprehensive understanding of the actual events, as they happened.
Jamie Berthe
New York University, November 2006
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Chronicles of African Modernities: Opening Night
NYU April 6, 2000
screening: Moi, un noir
Ginsburg:
Thank you all for your patience, I think we have been able to accommodate everyone and if you have to get undressed to tolerate the room, it's okay. (laughter) For anyone who doesn't know me I am Faye Ginsburg and I am the director for the Center for Media, Culture and History and one of the organizers of this event and we are really delighted to have all of you here. Before I go into a proper introduction of this evening's opening, I want to introduce briefly Cheryl Antoniel, who is a cinema scholar in her own right and also an Associate Dean for Film, Television and New Media at NYU... a very helpful ally...
(applause... Ginsburg passes the microphone)
Antoniel:
(at the podium) No, I am going to go it without the microphone, thank you. This is a very special evening for me. As a student many years ago – vanity will prevent me from saying how many years ago – I was introduced to the work of Jean Rouch, the filmmaker, by two of my faculty members who are actually here today, Manthia Diawara and the first course was actually Faye Ginsburg in 1986, Ethnographic Film. During the years that followed, I had the privilege of discovering Jean Rouch the anthropologist and today, for the first time actually, as representative of the school and the university at this moment, I have the pleasure of meeting and actually introducing to you, the legendary guest, Jean Rouch, the man, who is right here.
(gestures towards Rouch – applause)
I think for me and, of course, for many people – because I have seen some of what has been written – his work evokes, and this is very personal, a sense of community that extends way beyond the usual boundaries and simultaneously possesses a very involved and sincere curiosity, one that embraces not only the daily lives of his subjects but their imaginations as well. And most profoundly, a sense of reverence that reads for us as a celebration of the other. So finally, I would like to honor you by saying that there are people, exceptional people, who have the power both as individuals and through their work, to introduce us to each other and bring us together and our honored guest is certainly one such example. So without further ado, thank you for reuniting me with my own teachers and welcome on behalf of Tisch and NYU.
(applause)
Ginsburg:
(at the podium) Thank you Cheryl, and I have to say it's really great when your former students work as deans because around here you need a lot of pull. (laughter) Anyway, before going into the introduction of the program, there are many people to thank and many supporters to acknowledge. The range of fields reflects the very broad interests that Jean Rouch's work has provoked. For their help we are grateful to: The International Visitors Program; Deans Catherine Stimpson of the Faculty of Arts and Science and Mary Schmidt Campbell of the Tisch School of the Arts; the departments of Anthropology and Cinema Studies, Africana Studies and the Institute of African-American Affairs; the Institute of French Studies at La maison française; the Directors Series of the Maurice Kanbar of Film and Television; Veronique Godard and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy of New York; and, of course, Françoise Foucault of the Comité du film ethnographique at the Musée de l'Homme– we couldn't have done it without her. In addition there are so many fantastic people – fellow colleagues, students – who have helped make this happen with their diverse talents and energy and without whom none of this could have happened. I won't do the whole list, but quickly, Barbara Arash, Lisa Stefanhof, Ruti Tamore, Peggy Vail, Patricia Blanchet, Jenny Tischner, Kiera Kewitt, Brian Decavelis and that is just the start, so thank you all.
So, I too am very honored and delighted to be able to welcome Jean Rouch back to NYU and to New York and to open this three day retrospective of some of the most important and groundbreaking films that he has made in collaboration with his friends in Africa, over a period that spans the end of the colonial era to the present.
Since his first visit here, 12 years ago, at NYU, we have become a kind of second home for Rouch – I hope. A number of those of us who have studied and worked closely with him over the years are now teaching at NYU, myself, Manthia Diawara, Steve Feld recently joined us, Jean-Paul Colleyn comes from the l'École des Hautes Études to teach here occasionally, and we have invited Emilie deBrigard and Paul Stoller, one of the key scholars of Rouch's work in West Africa to join us as well over the next few days.
Rouch has spoken frequently about his early career studying at l'École des Ponts et Chaussées, and his work of building and blowing up bridges during World War II. Over the last couple of days I have been reflecting on this and I decided that, actually, he never changed careers he just changed his materials. He has been building bridges all of his life, for over half a century, creating links between Africa and Paris, between imagination and everyday life, between fiction and documentary, between the past and the future, and every once in awhile he blow things up too. (laughter)
Rouch also says that his films give birth to other films and in that spirit, the origin story of this event is worth telling – it's very brief, I promise – since this retrospective was actually conceived at the last one. In 1988 we first brought Rouch here in conjunction with an exhibition of Dogon art that opened at the Metropolitan Museum. We screened some of the more classic films that Rouch had made in Mali on Dogon ritual life and cosmology. At that time, Manthia Diawara asked why we weren't also showing the other films like Moi, un noir or Petit à petit, what Manthia and [Ousmane Sembene?] called, at the time, the first films of African modernity; films that helped open up spaces of possibility for African intellectuals like Manthia and others of his generation of the 1960's. We promised that we would meet again and show those films and talk about them. Well, it took us twelve years to make good on that promise but we think it's been well worth the wait.
Now I think we are going to proceed to the screening of the film and have the conversation afterwards between Manthia and Jean. So, without further ado, thank you all for your patience and on to the film.
- screening -
Ginsburg:
Let me briefly introduce Manthia Diawara for the few of you who may not know him [sound cuts out for about five seconds ...] and most recently has become a documentary maker and a few years ago completed a work, Rouch in Reverse, which is a kind of reverse ethnography; the African coming to Paris and interrogating his ancestor here (gesturing toward Rouch). So, I know also, Manthia has talked a lot about the influence of Moi, un noir on him and on his own thinking and his own development and interest in thinking about a kind of African modernity. So, okay, I am going to let you take over...
Rouch: You start? (looking at Diawara)
Diawara: Alors. [So.]
Rouch: Alors, ca va? [So, everything okay?]
Diawara: Comment on fait? [How are we going to do this?]
Rouch: Comme tu veux. [However you like.]
Diawara:
Well, it certainly feels good seeing the film again. In a way... The importance of the film, I mean every time I see it it's magnified in a sense that, as we saw Eddie Constantine at a point in the film, he is selling material from Gold Coast – he said this is the "latest style of 1957." 1957 – Ghana independence is going on; Houphouet Boigny in Ivory Coast is not only the head of the PDCI [3] , he is also the chief of RDA [4] ; la loi cadre [5] is going on; Guinea is going to become independent. That is one kind of official modernity. There is another kind of official modernity that can be linked to tradition, to religion, to Islam and in a way Islam is organizing many of these groups into one identity. What I like about the film is the way in which Moi, un noir succeeds in telling a completely different story alongside these two official modernities – the religious one and the African independence/African decolonization one, which were all taking place at the same time.
What I like about Jean's filming of that – I have a lot of notions but I am not going to talk to you too long, you came to listen to Jean – what is interesting is that you follow Jean, who is following these young people, who are following American "B" movies. And then, you get a real synchrony of style when Jean and these young people meet finally in the encounter between the Italian guy and Oumarou Ganda. Then you get film noir, you get the rain. You get all the rancor, all the jealousy, in this Baudelairian character basically – somebody who comes to the city, wants to be like the bourgeoisie and suddenly realizes that he cannot be like that. And that kind of envy says a lot more about Africa to me, and when I was growing up, than anything else. That envy, rancor, jealousy, hatred, you know, that the working class has accumulated toward all these kinds of modernities, really – toward white people, toward religious people, toward African elite. This is why I identify with Oumarou Ganda. It's no accident that he became one of the first African filmmakers, one of the first modern – in the kind of modernity I am trying to define modernism – you know, Baudelairian characters that I am really – that later becoming whatever you want, Edward G. Robinson, James Dean, Blaxploitation movies, but it's the same situation that we see. That is what is really great about the film. And Jean finds his style there. I mean, even watching the film today, I was talking to Bob Stam, you saw Nathalie and Dorothy L'Amour dancing. Exactly two years later, we see Brigitte Bardot is dancing like that. If you know your New Wave film, you've seen that. (laughter) Two years later, just two years later, in Vadim's film Et Dieu créa la femme, you get that... but there are lots of things that I can talk about in this film but I'll let Jean talk.
Rouch:
Thanks. Okay, you see I can summarize the story of the film. I was an anthropologist and, after the Gold Coast, I was interested by the [inaudible] in Ivory Coast. We had a mission at the IFAN [6] , institut français de recherche [7] in Abidjan and we were in charge of organizing a survey about the migrants coming from the North – what they were doing and so on. We started to recruit some people who could fill out forms about that. We asked people from Upper Volta to the Moshi, to the people from Niger – like Oumarou Ganda and others – and people from Sudan to be there and do inquiries with the statistic service of Ivory Coast. And one day, I showed Les maitres fous to this group of young people. And they were very impressed and they said, "Why isn't it possible for us to make another film and to tell another story?" And the story began in this way.
Among these people one of the most interesting was, maybe, Oumarou Ganda. An ex-fighter in Indochina – he was very intelligent, always against everybody. His pal, Eddie Constantine was really the seducteur and so on. They were a very strange people and they said, "We think that what you did in Accra is nothing in comparison to what we can do, and what we can do is a real film." Yes. And then, it was a fantastic story because when I started to shoot I was using the same camera as I had before, a Bell and Howell 16mm with Kodachrome film, and for the sound, the same very old type of recording materials. And when we started suddenly there was no more Oumarou Ganda, there was the actors, they entered the story directly and they were making... they tried to make a film. And myself, I tried to make a film. It was a very strange way to do it, but for months and months we followed them in all kinds of places. My friend, a geographer, played the role of the boxer or the Italian and so on; the voice of the Italian is the voice of Enrico Fulchignoni from UNESCO. (laughter) We didn't know anything about how to make a film. But the images – it was a silent film, as they say – told a wonderful story. And suddenly there was a drama – Eddie Constantine was put in jail. Well, I didn't know what to do. It was July and we had finished our survey about Abidjan and following people there.
Then I went back to Paris with the first film, with the rushes. And I showed the film to Pierre Braunberger, who was the producer on the first film I made. And Pierre Braunberger was very fascinated by the film. He said to me, "Well, you can try to edit the film and in three months you can go back with a print and try to record a narration with these actors." Well that is what I did, what we did.
So we have the story, we didn't know exactly, there was no dialogue [script]. Eddie Constantine was out of jail and they were, these boys and myself were very serious but we didn't know where we were going. We started to try to do post-synchronization for the sound. It was done at Radio Abidjan – there was no place to make films at this time. We put a projector outside the window and we used the radio technician to record the narration. It was a really...well, suddenly we screened the image and Robinson and Constantine just improvised the narration. There was no problem. The people at the radio were absolutely confused. (laughter) And the text was recorded in one day. Well, it was so extraordinary that I hardly understood what we had done.
We went back to Paris. Then, as was done for Les maitres fous, Pierre Braunberger blew the film up into 35mm. We had a wonderful editor and we worked to edit the film. It was not very difficult. It was a little long because we were making it, inventing the music and so on. The problem happened at the end when Pierre Braunberger decided that the war in Indochina was not a good part of the film; that it would be better to have some footage shot in Indochina. Myself, I thought this idea was stupid; I thought that Oumarou Ganda's description of the war was so dramatic, it needed nothing more. So, we discussed and discussed and Pierre Braunberger said, "Okay, I'll ask one of your friends to come to a screening and we'll ask what he thinks." And it was François Truffaut. François Truffaut came and at the end of the film he said, "Jean, thank you, you gave me a way to finish Les 400 Coups. I have to use the same technique." Then Pierre Braunberger said, "Aha! You two have been in contact before!" (laughter) And we said "No, no, no." So Pierre Braunberger said "Alright, the film will be done your way." The film won an important award [8] and we decided to have the premiere in Abidjan.
There was more trouble because Abidjan was now in the new constitution of the French colonies and there was a lot of censorship by stupid French men. (laughter) We had a screening with all my friends in Abidjan, Eddie Constantine, they were all there, and the girls were there. We had prepared a wonderful dinner because it had won an award, which was very good. At the end of the film, a stupid French officer said, "No. It's impossible to show a film like that." And Oumarou Ganda, who was there, asked, "Why?" And he said, "Because it has a fight between a white and a black and you don't have the right to show things like that nowadays." Oumarou Ganda said, "But I wasn't the winner. The white guy was the winner." (laughter) The man didn't say anything. We spent such a sad evening, even if we still had the dinner and the film was screened.
But there is a god or a devil for the strange filmmakers like me. The film had tremendous success. They released a censored version but after a month the print had to be changed. But there was no other print in Abidjan, the diffusion [distribution/circulation] was in Dakar. They asked someone from Dakar to send them a new print but the new print had not been censored. So the film had a new existence. The man in the cinema house wrote "nouvelle version" [new version] and that was our revenge. (laughter). That is the story of this film. It's really... for me, when I see these images I am very moved. Some of these people have died. Others.. Leone, who was Tarzan, became a very important boxer. He went back to Niger and was put in charge of training athletes for Niger. The others, well, it's difficult to say. My friend, Bernus, thought he wasn't a good actor. Fulchignoni liked the work very much. We thought it might be possible to go on. We went back to Niamey with the film. That's when Oumarou Ganda decided to make a film about the war in Indochina. He shot the film in Niamey with the French army, the Nigerian army, and with all the people who had brought back some of the wonderful ladies from Indochina. It was his first film. I was very proud because it was again the birth of a new filmmaker. That is, for me, fantastic. He became a very important guy in Niamey. His idea was to make films in this style. He was in charge of a group called "L'heure du conte" – time to tell stories. He worked all over, wherever there were school boys whom he could ask to tell stories. He would collect these stories and with these stories he would make new films. Everything was fantastic. Another Nigerian was making films. I saw that I had done something, that there was a new style of cinema being born there. Unfortunately two years later, Oumarou Ganda died, the very day of Christmas. There was what we call in Songhay a salut de destin [tribute to destiny]. There was a big meeting with all these people who were filmmakers and, later on, there was an international meeting of cinema there. People coming from Dakar, all over, asked to know if they could pay a visit to Oumarou Ganda's tomb. But in this country there is no such place. It would have been impossible to find the tomb; it was only a stone and nobody knew where it was. But there was a sculpture of Oumarou Ganda where we had a very extraordinary gathering, which is the way to celebrate the death of friend. Nowadays in Niger, Oumarou Ganda is a kind of legend. The new, young people who are in cinema, come to me and ask, "Is it true, did he exist?" and so on.
You see, maybe our friendship came from the fact that I had been in the war against the Germans. I was an ex-soldier. And I lost the war. And Oumarou Ganda told me that he felt like he had lost too, in Indochina. We were like two of Napoleon's soldiers coming back from the Russian defeat, coming back to Paris with the feeling that we are foreigners in our own country. We felt like foreigners in a country of filmmakers.
Diawara: You know, people can jump in any time and ask questions. I'm just trying to get the conversation going, so if you don't like what I am saying, ask a question whenever you're ready. But, the film is at the origin of so many things. When you see, for example, the Goumbés. [9] The Goumbés which could be associated with youth and with initiation dances – there were elaborate dances, but they had discipline and they dressed in similar ways. So Goumbés became a mark of a kind of modernity in West Africa. A variation of the Goumbés could also be bals poussieres, for example, in other places. You also show the beginning of High Life in the film. You know, which will later lead toward people like [Amelie Pierre?] and that kind of music in night clubs and dance halls. But the film also reveals a sense of nostalgia for the part of Africa that will never return again, but that anthropologists are still holding onto. (Diawara affectionately puts his arm on Rouch's shoulder and the audience laughs). Like when the kids are jumping into the water and when you see Tarzan, these beautiful scenes. In a way the film becomes, for me, the birth of an Africa that is going to be Africa. You can't get any other Africa beyond this Africa basically – with all its alienation. In fact, the alienation is what I find so formidable about the film.
Rouch: Thanks Manthia, it's true. Well, we thought we had done something. It was a dream machine. Because there was no other solution. And at the same time, there was this victory against the stupid white officers. And there was something very important about this victory. Like with my friends from the New Wave in Paris. We became very close and we were all ready to fight each other. For example, when there was the fight for the Cinématéque française. We were all ready to fight for each other. In fact we all had the same disease – we were in love with cinema. And maybe, as we say in French, it's a maladie honteuse [a shameful disease] and there is no remedy. Well, the only remedy is to make films. Of course, when you make films, some are good and some are not good, but that doesn't mean anything. They each follow something very strange. Like with Bernus, who was a very good geographer (he worked Theodore Monod and is now a specialist in the Sahara desert) and now, when he sees this film and he says, "Oh my goodness, it was so wonderful. We were so happy."
Diawara: Can you talk about the migration of workers from Upper Volta and Niger? Because in this very moment, about 15, 000 workers from Upper Volta and Burkina Faso have been expelled from Ivory Coast and are now in Burkina Faso and have no... [video cuts]
cut to:
Rouch: ... the beginning of the record. When I was making the sound, I was, myself, so moved. There was nothing for me to do, the film was speaking by itself. In the beginning it was a silent film and less then five hours later, it was a sound film. That was some kind of strange miracle. It was very important for the films I did later on; and for the people of Niamey it was important too. We now had dreams on the other side of the window.
Diawara: Questions? Comments?...
Audience member: Pourquoi le choix de l'italien? Pourquoi le choix, parce qu'il aurait pu etre français ou...? [10]
Rouch: That is a very good question. Because we saw that one evening in the desert – there was an Italian in the middle of the desert. I asked my friend Fulchignoni to do it and he was happy to do it. He was not an actor in the beginning. He was initially a psychoanalyst and then started working for UNESCO. He was so happy to play this role. He was really the Italian sailor and the language he had, what he said was pure Italian language that he improvised in less than one hour that people can do with my credo: the first take is always the best. Which is not always true, you know that, but we try. We try.
Audience member: I would like to ask what happened with the subtitles in the film?
Rouch: It's just a very bad print. It is quite difficult to have the most recent print. We have another print, in better condition but the narration is in French. People think that there is no interest for the film in English. And I knew that there was this problem with the film.
It's very strange, Dorothy Lamour asked me to make a certificate for her stating that during this film, she did not have a real romance because otherwise, she would have had trouble with her family and boyfriends. And that was so strange to have Dorothy Lamour ask this question.
The second point on which I had trouble was the music. The song we used was originally written for Bamako. (Rouch sings song) Then the people in Bamako were asking for the rights [royalties]. (laughter) And I said to Pierre Braunberger, now that is your job and he was very happy to demonstrate that it was an original song made for the film and that there was no author to pay. But anyway he was obliged to pay with the system of music that was on the film.
It was always a wonderful adventure. Thanks a lot to all of the people, and to Françoise, for doing this program. We have seen the film together over one hundred times and it's always... well, maybe I am too proud.
Diawara: The film is very important on the level of style. I am now analyzing the photography of Malick Sidibé. I don't know if you are familiar with it, but what Malick Sidibé did maybe 20 years later – '67, he followed the youth in Africa who were going out to parties. They were dressed like Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, with afros, the Beatles, and they have music records. Malick Sidibé just went out and followed them and took their pictures. And at the best moments of his photography, you realize that his photographs have actually become a sort of store for the nostalgia of the sixties. If you want to understand the sixties, even the American sixties, you have to go to Malick Sidibé's photography to see certain things. Similarly in Moi, un noir, what is fascinating to me, when you look at the dream sequences, for example, typical of that kind of fantasy that one used to have during the New Wave... you know, that the new France has come. Mini-skirts, new governments, De Gaulle and so on. Whatever. What you get at some point in this film is that Dorothy Lamour, she is actually a movie poster. In some instances, like in the bar, Dorothy becomes the drawings of the posters behind her. What is interesting to me in terms of style is that we have so many levels of copying taking place. Jean is copying the youth, who are copying American B movies, and then all of that becomes an original style suddenly. This is what we have now with Blaxploitation and Tarantino and other filmmakers. We are really outside of anthropology. We are in artifice now and this is where I am and I love that.
Rouch: You are right. It was very important also for the new style of music. Incredibly important. When I was chairman of the Cinématéque française for three years, we invited the authors of some of the great American films and they saw this film. And I wanted to ask them something... well you see, I learned how to make films by going to the popular cinema with Bernus in Abidjan, and discovering that the reaction of the audience happened in time with what was going on onscreen. When there was a fight you would hear, "oh, ah, uhhh, oh." And there was one thousand people doing this; it was fantastic and totally improvised. And I told this story to the people who make all these films in Hollywood. And they told me, "Well you're right. When we did the film, we put some hot jazz music on the phonograph and we edit the image to follow the sound and rhythm of the music." They were doing the editing that way and it prepared the film for the wonderful rhythmic reaction of the 1,000 people, who would go "oh, ah, uhh, oh."
And I told this story to Truffaut, and he liked it very much. He said, "But in my film, you see, the rights [royalties] of the musicians in France are so heavy that what can you do with that? If you ask them to play something they say no." That's the story.
Ginsburg: We can take two more questions and then we have to wrap it up.
Audience member: Now that it's years after independence in Africa is this interest and obsession with America still a part of African modernity, or is there a different idea of African modernity?
Rouch: My answer is very simple. African modernity belongs to the Africans themselves. Maybe I played a role of, let's say of an entraineur [trainer], but African modernity belongs to the Africans. I am not an African. Sometimes I decide that my real identity... I'm a man from Barcelona (laughter). And I like it. But anyway...
Diawara: I just want to make a comment, not really answer. When we were growing up, we were imitating French people imitating Americans; so you see, it was removed like that. I think it is probably still the same way because rap music goes through France... no, it does go directly to Senegal now. Still...
Audience member: Are there Africans who imitate Africans?
Diawara: In the work I am doing what is happening is this: In the sixties you have African youth imitating people like James Brown, who thought he was imitating traditional African shamanism. James Brown's red cape, the way he breathes; he doesn't say much but he exorcises everybody – and then that goes back to Africa and then the African youth imitates that and then you get people like Salif Keita who are again taking it back into the world. To me, imitation is a positive word. I love alienation, in a way. It goes around, and then goes around again. It isn't like I am taking everything out of Africa and saying that Africa is not playing any role in the process. Without alienation I wouldn't be sitting in a room full of white people like this. I love that, I think it's great.
Rouch: When I was younger we were fond of jazz. And I discovered Louis Armstrong; I went to his first concert in Paris, when I was very young, I was 15 years old. It was very expensive. And there was the director of Hot Club de France, Hugues Panassie, he was a wonderful man, and when Louis Armstrong started to play "On the Sunny Side of the Street," he stopped him and said, "Please not the high notes. Please. I heard you on a record when I was young when you sang it in the low notes. It's fantastic." And Louis Armstrong said, "oh yeah?" And I was there! And for me, as a young boy, it was extraordinary to be there. And then, smiling, Louis started singing in the low notes. And at the end there was an explosion of joy. And for me – you see, I was only 14 years old – this was the discovery of something absolutely international. Louis Armstrong was at home in Paris and Hugues Panassie was at home in New York and Chicago.
And my position, which is absolutely a dream, is this: if you are an artist, you have no borders. Well, of course, I have a passport, but I am not sure it's a real one. (laughter)
Ginsburg: We are going to take these two questions and then afterwards I invite you, actually we are having a reception upstairs and he is a very accessible person so... but it's hot here and I know people would like something to eat so...
Audience members: Well frankly, I think we should end on this question of we have no borders. However, on the question of imitation, I noticed in the film that when they do the cha-cha-cha the lyrics are being sung in Spanish. Now, possibly, as you say Manthia, this came by way of France, but I don't think the French would sing the cha-cha-cha in Spanish, they would sing it with French lyrics.
Diawara: No, you're right. When you look at the birth of High Life and then, the rhumba, and music like the pachenga in West Africa – all of this popular music came with sailors from Cuba and other places to Africa but was danced to in night clubs that were accessible first to ex-patriots, and Africans only came to that later. So even when the music is in Spanish and English and not in French or African languages, I think that the symbolic capital is driven through the French elite who brought it to Africa.
Audience member: But what I find remarkable is that they're singing the lyrics accurately in Spanish, and I assume that they don't speak Spanish but they know these lyrics!
Diawara: Yeah, you're right.
Audience: but the rhumba comes from Africa... the rhumba and the pachenga, it's linked to the slaves...
Rouch: I can tell you a wonderful story. During the Festival des Arts Negres in Dakar, there in Senegal, in Dakar there was this festival of art. I was there with Mustafa Alassane and some other people with my [Nagra?]. Duke Ellington was the guest of honor. He was there with his fantastic orchestra in the Serrano Theatre. And suddenly he did what he used to do in his own country and said, "Please give me your favorites." So I asked to hear The Saddest Tale which is not very well known. It's the story of a man who was put in jail. And he was very happy and he started to sing and he sang the song. "The saddest tale they told me..." By the end we were all en larmes [in tears]. At the after-party he asked, "Where did you hear this song?" And I told him that I had been at one of his concerts in Paris, 20 years ago. That is our privilege. We can be provocateurs.
Diawara: That is right; that's why I take advantage of the great Jean Rouch's presence to provoke as many people as I can. (laughter)
Audience member: I was thinking as we listened to the voice-over, knowing that Oumarou Ganda and Jean Rouch were in the recording studio afterwards, I had a sense of somebody who takes on a role as an actor or somebody who is looking at images and all the references to Paris and to France and the U.S., all those things come together afterwards. I was wondering if while you filmed, if Oumarou Ganda had a sense of being an actor or a sense of being himself?
(Diawara translates)
Rouch: Oumarou Ganda took himself for a filmmaker and that's all. (laughter). He thought if somebody else could play this role better, I would give it to him. He was like that. Myself, in some films I did play some roles but I am not very good. This profile is good (turns to the left) but not this one (turns to the right – laughter) Like the old Egyptian drawings.
Ginsburg: Alright, thank you everyone. There is a reception upstairs. And I have to tell you, screenings for the next two nights will be in a much bigger theater. Thanks for bearing with us.
(Rouch and Diawara hug affectionately)
Chronicles of African Modernity: Day 2
Casa Italiana (NYU) April 7, 2000
screening: La pyramide humaine
Ginsburg: Hi, if I could have your attention. Welcome to the 2nd day of the retrospective of the work of Jean Rouch: Chronicles of African Modernity. This afternoon the screening will be La pyramide humaine. I am just going to introduce it briefly because we'll have the opportunity for a conversation afterwards. Of course, you all know who Jean Rouch is, I am not going to continue to do introductions for him. We're very fortunate that Jean-Paul Colleyn has become a sort of itinerant between l'École des Hautes études Sociales in Paris, where he is a professor and director of the visual anthropology unit and also has been teaching here at NYU in the Anthropology Department, particularly in the Culture and Media program. Like Jean, he has been working most of his life in West Africa. He is also a filmmaker who's not up to Jean's 120 films, but has made approximately 50 films in West Africa as well. He is a prolific author with a long and distinguished career. He has written Les Chemins d'Inya, Nikpiti, and more recently a wonderful book called Le regard documentaire. He's also starting a really innovative project on the history of ethnographic film and documentary, using new CD rom and DVD technologies which is really exciting. And the prototype is actually on Rouch and we did a demonstration of it earlier this week. So we're really grateful that Jean-Paul could be with us today to be the interlocuter afterwards.
So, just a few words about La pyramide humaine. Obviously, 1961, so it comes right after Moi, un noir and continues the notion of kind of improvising a drama, this time between white and black students in the Lycée d'Abidjan. What I'll say breifly, that it was top on the list of the 10 best films of 1962 selected by Jean-Luc Godard for Cahiers du Cinéma. It was also, in 1965, selected by Jean-Luc Godard as one of the six best French films made since 1940. So, it has a distinguished career that continues to the present. So, we'll get going.
- screening -
Ginsburg: Well, the story will now continue. I'd like to invite Jean Rouch and Jean-Paul to come up and speak to you.
Colleyn: Well, that is quite a piece. I think we all understand why the New Wave was so interested in this film. The first question we have to ask is when did you discover that special power of the camera to create something new and not just record something that already exists?Rouch: Well I haven't seen this film in over five years. But I think we were crazy to make a film like this. But fortunately we were very crazy. (laughter) The idea was to make a feature film. We had a producer behind us, Pierre Braunberger, but it was a strange story and we were playing with fire all the time. I'll start with a bit of background.
All these students were preparing for their baccalauréat. When I asked their families for permission to make the film, they said I had to wait until after the exam, during winter holidays. The result was that only one of the kids passed the exam and all the others were sacked. I was not responsible. (laughter) Of course, the only one who passed was Denise. So then we made the film.
Colleyn: But they didn't have much time to study, because they were making the film.
Rouch: Yes. But the next September the entire group passed their baccalauréat, which means that they learned something. And my role wasn't so negative and in some way I am very proud of that.
Colleyn: Maybe we should go immediately to questions; I think it's the best way to handle the reception of the film.
Audience member: I was just curious to know if these bonds lasted over the years.
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: Yes. They were part of a generation. You see, this film was very difficult to distribute in France. We were being threatened. In the end it was the association "Anti-Raciste" who pushed the film.
Colleyn: Yes, the film was banned in all French territories.
Rouch: Yes. And after the first screening of the film, my flat on rue de Grenelle was attacked by people who had broken the door and the windows. It was a strange way to make a political statement.
And one of the first screenings was at the Cinématéque française and all my friends from the New Wave were there. Truffaut even asked Nadine if she would play a role in Tirez sur le pianiste. That was her entrance.
I think it's strange because it shows that maybe fiction is a stronger than documentary.
Colleyn: But in a way, it's more like creating a group dynamic rather than pure fiction.
Rouch: But we were playing with fire...or with the waves. That last shot was absolutely stupid. That boat was very dangerous. At first it was Alain who said he could swim around the boat and get out. And I was following him with my camera but then he stopped and said, "No, I can't do it." Then stupidly, I put my camera down and dove in the water to show him I could swim out. And with this boat it was very dangerous. So the boy jumped in and we shot but I must say, during the last shoot we did there, at one point I saw him get lost in the waves. I was looking out in the waves and I thought he wasn't there. Then my assistant turns to me and says, "Jean il est sorti" [Jean he's out]. And whew! (sighs) You see, then we were in full drama. (laughter).
Audience member: When you started to make this kind of synchronization, this style of cinema, who were talking to? Rouquier? Were you friends with Rouquier? Did you have discussions with other filmmakers? I mean, how did this evolve?
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: Yes, I was a member of the New Wave in France. You see that was the strange thing. I was always at the Cinémathéque française. The Cinémathéque française was on rue Dume, in a small part of the Latin Quarter. The theater was not very good. The only decent seats were in the front row. So every evening I was going there and there were strange young fellows there and they knew a lot about film. When the film was good, they would discuss it. And when the film was bad you could just lay down in the aisles. (laughter) It was very nice. But I didn't know who they were; they were younger than me. Then one day Langlois asked me to show a film that I had not finished. He asked me to screen the film and use a mic to improvise the narration. The copy wasn't very good and suddenly there was a cut in the film, but with my mic I was able to finish my sentence. And I heard them discussing how it was possible that the sound kept going if the reel had cut. And suddenly they saw me there with a mic. I waved to them and at the end of the film they came to introduce themselves: Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer and so on. They knew my name and I became a member of this group of people they called the New Wave.
Colleyn: It's important to be precise for those who don't know it: Godard has said several times that he was inspired by your style of cutting and by the way you created a new effect in cinema with this kind of performance and experiment.
Rouch: Yes, and you see, for them I was a strange man making strange films like this one. But they recognized that there was something which could stimulate the New Wave to be a bigger wave. (laughter)
Colleyn: For instance, Jacques Rivette, who makes films very different from yours, said that he felt you were even more important than Godard for French cinema because Godard has a style that cannot be followed, that cannot be used as a model for anybody. Whereas with your films...every Rouch film is an example for other filmmakers. That's a beautiful tribute.
Rouch: Yes, but you see, we are a very strange family. We were a group. We played an important part in the history of the Cinémathéque and also in May '68. For example, when I made Chronicle of a Summer with Edgar Morin, at this time one of our heroines was in love with Rivette. And in the film Rivette accepted to be an actor for real life. It's a strange way to make films. And we shared our experiments. It's strange to say but we shared our souls. You see, at this time it was very difficult to be a French man. Myself, I was older than them. I had the immense advantage of having been through a war with the German army. I was an ex-soldier and I had lost the war. And that changes everything – when you lose a war and find yourself with horrible French politics after the war. And I was an anthropologist; I was always going far away and they were not. I was some sort of strange navigator. I would have liked to be [Errol Loyd?].
Audience member: Can you say something about the context of the film and why it was banned? Because in a way it almost seems like an allegory for decolonization coming out of the 1960's.
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: I don't remember. [Paul Lucere?] just said "Your film is forbidden." They asked us to cut some sequences but I don't remember if we did it. Maybe. All those things about South Africa, about apartheid. That was the idea.
Colleyn: Of course, because French policy was involved.
Rouch: Yes, but we knew all the tricks; we were tricheurs [tricksters / cheaters] in fact. Once the film became a success and there was only one print, so when it was finished, the lab would need another print and we didn't cut the parts that were censored. So you could play with the idea of a "new version."
Colleyn: So the more the film was used, the better the film was? (laughter)
Audience member: I would like your comment on the fact that everything that might have seemed shocking about the film has just evaporated with time and what's left is just the perfume of the poetry.
Rouch: Well, that's a good question. And what happened later on? After the film I said they all went back. But Alain joined the Foreign Legion and went back to fight in Algeria. It means he was the hero of the film. That's strange.
And Nadine, well, some of our friends...everyone in this group was making films with each others actors. She had the opportunity to become a young star and she decided not to, to continue. Now she is the Director of The Museum of Music at La Villette. She went on and got a degree there. At first she wanted to be an anthropologist but she thought it was difficult. Her love life is very complicated. We made Paris vu par with her, and she fell in love with Becker, the cameraman for the film. And they were married.Colleyn: You do that in all your films?! There is a love story and a marriage?! (laughter)
Rouch: Yes, they married and she said to me, "Jean, the Becker family is horrible. I'll get out." And you see, I'm not comparing myself to the Godfather, but, there was something like... (laughter)
Colleyn: ...it's like you create the situation where love stories...
Rouch: ...like Eros – rather close to Greek mythology. (laughing)
Colleyn: It was very smart to choose the problem of sexuality to illustrate racism because it is a hot topic – with fantasy and fear.
Rouch: Yes, but it was strange because I was a cameraman discovering the film and they were so moved at the same time. We discovered with them this Harris church – because Raymond was a Harris. And then there was this mix with Arthur Rimbaud. And I like all of that.
Colleyn: Harris is a new church in Africa, created by African people to emancipate Africa from white domination.
Rouch: Yes. And what else happened? Landry, who was a very wonderful guy, finished his studies in France. Then he went back to Abidjan.
Colleyn: He played in another one of your films.
Rouch: Yes, he made another film with me and he made a Canadian film about a community in Ivory Coast. But at one point, he decided to solve the problem of his own identity. He had been educated [brought up] by his grandmother and his mother, and he never met his father. So he had some girlfriends and so on. And he was married with a girl who was a nurse and they had a son, and he decided to ask the mother to get out and to make the education of [raise] his son alone. He wanted to have a son who could be educated [raised] by men and not women. And it wasn't exactly a mess. (laughs) But now he's the director of a rubber company in Ivory Coast. He's a very wealthy gentleman. And sometimes he comes to Paris and we have dinner parties and it's like, let us say, a diner des anciens combatants [veterans' dinner].
Colleyn: I remember a few years ago that Nathalie was in Paris and you wanted her to dance, to do some sort of a remake of the film and she refused because her partner was dead. It was very cute.
Rouch: Denise probably had the most difficult problems. She was the daughter of the President of the Republic of Upper Volta. And she decided to stay in Ivory Coast and she has a very important political position. She had some trouble with her brothers. They were students in Paris and they wanted to marry models [supermodels]. So she had to play the role of the mother who says no. She asked me to come to the dinner too, with the brother and the girl, to help her explain the situation. I was a kind of step-grandfather.
Ginsburg: Can you talk a bit more about the plot of the film, how you found it?
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: Well, in the beginning we didn't know. It was total improvisation. And the producer was very anxious.
Colleyn: Of course! (laughter) Was there a text somewhere? I mean, we do recognize some aspect of Rouch poetry. The story with the heart, and its divisions...Rouch: Yes, but Pierre Braunberger... well, there are no more producers like him. He was a crook. He used to say you had to be a crook to be a producer. But he was a crook with a very good eye. We loved him. Pierre Braunberger was a kind of hero for all the New Wave directors. I remember there was an homage to Pierre Braunberger at Beaubourg. I was with Damouré Zika in the cinema and Pierre was there. And they asked him to present himself and his presentation went like this: My grandfather was a doctor. My father was a doctor. Then, I have to say it in French but Jean-Paul will translate it – Il y a que moi qui a mal tourné [I'm the only one who went sour].
Colleyn: I'm the only one who turned bad. (laughter)
Rouch: Well, everyone applauded and he was very proud of that. I remember when he died – he was a Jew – and before he died he asked me to carry his body in the cemetery of Montparnasse. Strangely, I was carrying the coffin with another man who was the director of the Centre national du cinéma. We were carrying this body and the man turns to me and says, "Wow. I didn't know this guy was so heavy." (laughter) So that was our derniére blague [last joke] with Pierre Braunberger.
Audience member: I am very struck by your celebration of young people, and their exuberance and vitality in your films. And the way you take groups of young people and see where they are going. I wonder if you can say a little more about your attraction to that particular age group, which is very distinctive in your films.
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: Well, amongst all of us, we were all in love with Nadine. (laughter) And when we started the film they knew each other but there was no contact between them. So I was a kind of step-father. That's the story. But there was something else behind it. Among Nadine's books there was one by Paul Eluard with this wonderful poem, "La dame de carreau" ("The Queen of Diamonds"). You see, when I was young Paul Eluard was so strange and "La dame de carreau" was like having the doors of dreams open. I think it was our story. It was made for this generation which had been so influenced by surrealism.
Colleyn: I think it is very interesting that you go through poetry to make a very political film and also a film that is psychologically very interesting, although you were not interested in Karl Marx and not in Sigmund Freud.
Rouch: Yes. And later on I made a film with Nadine and Landry, which was a stupid film we decided to do in one day. It was the story of Nadine who was having some trouble in school and gets sent home, so she discovers Luxembourg [gardens] and les quais [the banks of the Seine], and then she meets Landry and they discover the Museum of Natural History. We decided to shoot the film. I was the cameraman with a good soundman. The film was supposed to be one hour. Our challenge was to see if we could shoot a long feature film in one day and with only 20 reels. And we did that. We finished the film and I got a message from André Breton – because I had used some of his poems – and he said he was very moved by the film. I was so happy because...
Colleyn: That's very good.
Rouch: Yes.
Audience member: I don't really have a question I just wanted to say that I thought it was interesting that coming out today in New York is this film called Black and White by James Tobac which is an improvised film about documentary and the possible relationships between black and white youths in America and whether they can be friends. It is kind of a strange coincidence.
(Colleyn translates)
Rouch: Je crois que je vais demander une indemnité. (laughs) C'est Kodak? [11]
Colleyn: Jean thinks they should have to pay a fee. (laughter)
Rouch: Yes, they have to pay their fee... (laughing)
Colleyn: Thank you very much Jean. (applause)
Rouch: (turns toward audience) And thanks to you. You see, throughout this time, during this discussion, we were sharing real emotions. I think that is the real key to cinema. Nothing else is as important as that. Thanks a lot.
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Chronicles of African Modernities: Day 2
NYU April 7, 2000
screening: Jaguar
Ginsburg: [audio not working for introduction to film]
- screening -
Ginsburg: I just want to remind everyone that at 7 o'clock there is a screening of Petit à petit, which again is one of the films which is not generally available for distribution in the US. That is over at the Cantor Film Center which is at 36 E 8th Street and the doors should open about a quarter of seven. Bring your friends, it's a big theater and we have a lot of space. Okay. It is my pleasure to introduce this conversation between Jean Rouch and Steve Feld. For those of you who don't know Steve Feld, he is a professor of Anthropology at NYU. He was the first person to translate Jean Rouch's work into English and also translated and edited an issue of Studies in Visual Communication of all the material on Chronicle of a Summer. Many of you have seen that issue. He is also an ethnomusicologist and a musician and has produced CDs of the music from the area of New Guinea where he works. And they are old friends these two. And I know that Steve is a big fan, we are all big fans of Jaguar, but I think he has some particular interests he wants to raise before we open up for discussion.
Feld: Permit me a word of appreciation before we start.
Rouch: I'm very happy when I see this film. It's full of so many good memories. In the beginning there is a dédicace [dedication] to a famous French actor, Gerrard Phillipe. He became my friend because we were close to the theater of Chaillot [Cinémathéque française] at the Musée de l'Homme and we became friends because we were both making films. The film [Jaguar] was shot in Kodachrome. I was working with a Bell and Howell that I had to rewind every 20 seconds. And when it came time for editing and to make the print and we had no money. Gerrard Phillipe said, "well, I can give you half a million [francs]." I said, "Yeah?" And he said, "It's for you because I am very wealthy and you're a filmmaker and I'm a film actor." That's why I dedicated the film to Gerrard Phillipe. And what's strange is that, I must say, no anthropologist and no professor at the Sorbonne gave me a penny. (laughter) Anyway.
The second point I'd like to make is rather extraordinary. It was a crazy affair to make a film like this. Every 20 seconds I was rewinding the camera. But during this time I was speaking to the actors and we would invent the next part of the story. That was a very strange way to proceed. When I see the film, the images are so good. And I'm no longer working with the Kodachrome. That was the original Kodachrome which was really a first class camera. The sound was made on a pretty small box that we had to rewind all the time. And well, the sound is not so good, but it was my first film.
When we screened the film in Niamey, it was really strange because a lot of people [who were in the film had] died, so we would have to stop the film and let everyone cry a little. You see, Lam died. The older singers of Ayoru died. The chief of Ayoru died. Today there are maybe two survivors, Damouré and myself. The film is at the same time a souvenir [record] of the very important discovery that this was the beginning of African independence. You see the CPP [12] film was a real discovery. We were there. And when Damouré was playing the role of the photographer and he took the picture of Kwame Nkrumah and said in the narration "le bien nourri" [the well fed one]. It means that there was always this kind of joking in the narration, which was improvised. These kinds of jokes happened all the time. And that was not so bad. It's a kind of chronicle of a time that has disappeared forever. But it has disappeared forever and it hasn't, because this film exists. And that for me is the strength of cinema and the emotion of cinema. What a strange way to have a memory. This memory you can share it year after year with a new public. And I think that, for me, this is very moving and encouraging. (turns to Feld) You understand what I mean?
Feld: Yes. Jean, I also love this film also because of the sound. There is so much with the voices. It's not just the words that people are saying, but just the sound, the humor, the feeling, the emotion of the voices. Can you tell us a bit about your technique in making the soundtrack? Because it is such a completely unique soundtrack.
Rouch: As an anthropologist, I was really discovering a time when Africa was really turning a page. I didn't know that exactly but I knew that there was something. When I was working in the North I knew it quite well. Well, the Hauka were coming from this region. Everything was starting then. I must say, very simply, for Damouré and myself and the others, it was our duty to make a film like this. And when we had to finish the film, well, it was done very strangely. I thought it was necessary to have this kind of narration. Narration is the way to tell the story and to find the way of the griot, [13] and to find the way of the people speaking. We did it very easily. We screened the film, we held up some mics and Damouré and the others improvised the narration. And they were telling their story to another person. It was kind of a strange conversation in front of the images. We did it very strangely. Sometimes we had to do parts again. So we did it again in another place, and shot the film again with a new narration. We worked for two years on the film. Then one day the film was put on the screen. For my friends in France it was a way to... André Bazin, the critic, wrote something extraordinary about this film – that I was opening forbidden doors. No, they were not forbidden doors, they were open, but you had to go in.
And we didn't know what we were getting into. We had been filming for weeks and when we came back – I'll give you an example, it's an amusing one – when we came back to cross the border it was really a shame to us to see all these people there asking for money. And then they would have to take the money out of their pocket and give it to the government. But what could we do? We could joke. You see, when we came back we did recognize some friends. We went by Ouagadugou and one of my friends who worked there, [Yves Faun?], asked if he could come with us to Niamey. And I don't know if you saw that, and I don't know if it's a shame, but the last car we are in has a white driver. That was him driving the car. And when we saw the film in Ouaga everyone was asking, "Why don't you open the door?" and he answered, "Jean asked me to be invisible." (laughter). And you see, there are so many things like that, things that were really part of the discovery of something else.
You see the last dance scene, it was one of the last done in Ayoru - now they are no longer held – and [Ansataga Delizé?] was a fantastic singer and player, and the dancers there were absolutely wonderful. You see, it was at the same time... well, Damouré, of course, fell in love with a young girl. And this caused a lot of trouble because she belonged to a family of fishermen. And they were acquainted [...difficult to understand the audio... ] but they did not marry. It was such a strange story. Nowadays, when we see the film we are weeping all the time and joking at the same time. Des larmes et des rires [tears and laughs] – that, for me, is the film. (turns to Feld) What is your opinion, yourself?
Feld: I love this film, as you know. I love the presence of the voices. I love not just what they're saying, but the energy and the exuberance of them. And the way the voices give us so much of a feeling of movement, of freedom, of the dignity and the agency, and also the relationship between you and your friends at that time. And all of the things that people were living through at that time, also all the sounds, the technology, the country, the city, the trains, the high life, every kind of possible music. I mean the film is also a fantastic catalogue, a fantastic soundscape of a particular time that I think is absolutely unique. So, you were talking about how there should be no borders. And, of course, in this film, there are not only no borders in terms of countries, but no borders in terms of fiction and ethnography, no borders in terms of the improvisation and control, no borders in terms of your voice and the voices of your friends. And it remains a very powerful film for me in that way.
Rouch: And you see the inspiration of Damouré and the others was fantastic. They did that on the first try. For example, when Damouré said that in the north of Togo the reason they paint their bridges red is because they like bridges so much, because they think they are so wonderful. (laughter) And it was like that all the time. The seashore scene is wonderful – when they go to the sea and bathe together. The story of coconuts [...difficult to understand the audio 53:45... ] It was a permanent joke. And I think there is one thing that is very important in this country and it is called a joking relationship. And I don't know if it exists nowadays in our own society, but in our group we had this kind of joking relationship. I'm not sure.
Feld: It's necessary. We should allow people some questions but before we do, you know, now we are going to see Petit à petit and then, Cocorico and Madame l'eau, and in these films the centerpiece of these films is your relationship with Damouré and Lam. Can you tell us the story of how you met Damouré and Lam and how it all started? I think it will help us think about all of these films.
Rouch: Well, you see, Damouré and Lam were old complices [partners in crime] [14] . In the beginning Damouré was working with me for the Travaux Publics in Niamey. He was the one who opened the doors to anthropology for me. I was working there as an engineer; it was the horrible time of travaux forcés [forced labor]. And my curiosity in anthropology began the day some thunder came down and killed ten of the workers on one of my chantiers [construction sites]. I asked the African office at Travaux Publics what we could do. They had asked some people to bury the bodies but the people said it shouldn't be done, it's impure. Damouré said, "Yes, this is my grandmother's business." And then I saw the wonderful old woman Kalia for the first time, who was one of the big priests among the Sorko of the Niger river. She said "Yes, that is my job." He [Damouré] asked me for a calabash of milk and transportation to bring their group of people, which was a group of dancers who could dance the possession dance and an orchestra. So, for the first time in my life, I saw a possession dance. It was very, very dramatic. I spoke to Dongo for the first time, who was the thunder god – as engineer, it wasn't on the programme [part of my training], you see (laughter) – and I asked, "Why did you kill these men? Who is guilty?" And Dongo said, "You." He said, "Because this land belongs to me, and you have to ask for my authorization before you start working here." And it was so strange. So we had to perform a sacrifice. And when we came back, I decided to go on. That was really my first ethnographic survey.
And only two weeks later, during a storm on the Niger River at Gamkalle a fisherman was killed. Damouré said that Kalia had asked him to go there and wanted me to go too because she didn't know if the man had been killed by the god of thunder or the god of water. I didn't understand a thing, but we went and there was a new ritual. I brought my Rolleiflex with me and took my first ethnographic photos. We used the lab at the hospital of Niamey to develop these photographs and I wrote my first report. I sent this report to Germaine Dieterlen and Griaule at the Musée de l'Homme and to Theodore Monod at IFAN. [15] I had an answer about 2 weeks later from Germaine Dieterlen and she said, "If the fisherman was killed by water, he will have the nose and the nombril coupés [belly button cut open]." I did not understand anything. She said that was the tradition in the Mopti area, which was 1000 miles away from Niamey. So, I went to see Kalia and asked her the question and her answer was simple, "You know all the answers, why do you ask these questions?" Then I started to discover that maybe anthropological research wasn't real research. And that was the beginning. You see, for me, all these things are very important.
Feld: So Damouré was with you from the beginning?
Rouch: Yes, yes. Lam... well, I met Lam after two of my friends and I decided to canoe down the Niger River after the war. It was a stupid idea but anyway, we spent a couple months doing that. I was making some movies, and this was a way to do that, and we were all taking photographs. The last part of our trip was in Nigeria. Damouré was a civil servant in the Republic of Niger and didn't have a passport, so it was impossible for him to go to Nigeria. But he told us about a good friend of his who was a Fulani shepherd who had been to Nigeria when he was young. Lam, at this time, was 20 years old. He told me the nice story of how he had been a Talibisé [16] – a student of the Koranic church. There was a Koranic priest who was going to Nigeria for the opening of a mosque. He brought a group of boys with him who would go from house to house and ask for food au nom de Dieu [in the name of God]. Well when they arrived, the Muslim priest died. The boys were told they had to go back to their home. So Lam, who was maybe 9 or 10 years old, went from Abeokuta to the Niger river by foot. When we were going with him on the Niger river, he told us some fantastic stories. The way he was attacked by a lion during his journey. He had to climb to the top of the tree with the lion below. And the lion was there going "grrrrr" and Lam was in the tree and didn't know what to do. But early the next morning the lion wasn't there – perhaps the lion went to visit his wife, nobody knows – and Lam started to run. (laughter) We don't know if the story was true, but it was wonderful.
He was very important for the films we were doing. He was a Fulani and he could read. When he was going north, he saw a sign for Sokoto. For the Fulani, Sokoto is a place where some very important chiefs were. It was important for him to see if there was any souvenirs [mementos / records] there. Then, when he arrived in Sokoto, suddenly he saw some white cows. They were wonderful, he said. Absolutely white, but they had no horns. Then he followed the cows around and started to speak with them. He told me about how they could speak. And I asked, "What language?" and he said, "Cow language." (laughter) And that was a wonderful story.
When we decided to make films, we thought it would be important to have these white cows close to the windmill we built [referring to Madame l'eau]. We discovered that in Niamey there were also these cows. A very important man who was a veterinarian knew the story behind these cows. They were coming from India. A district commissioner in India was sent to Sokoto and he asked to go there because he was interested in cows. And in Sokoto he came with his white cows from India. He asked the Fulani cow herders to have a look at his cows and told them that the milk was excellent. And they said, "No we cannot drink this milk. It is the milk of Satan. These cows have no horns." So, you see, this introduction was really strange. And when we made the film we started with the idea to have these wonderful cows close to the moulin ˆ vent [windmill]. And then we discovered that in Niamey there was a lady who was in love with these cows and had some there, so it was easy to start our story. We were on our way and unfortunately, Lam died. And then we didn't know where we going. The idea is that in this film, the people are always in and out of reality and dreams, and all the films we've made follow the same road. So, we invented the idea that these cows were with their shepherd, Tallou, and that he could understand their language.
[End of DVD #2]
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[Beginning of DVD #3]
ROUCH: [cont'd] And what does it mean? We couldn't explain. And one day the cows crossed the bridge of Niamey to see Hell, and they saw Hell on the bridge and they were so afraid of the traffic that they laid down in the middle of the bridge. When Tallou arrived, the people were ready to throw these cows in the river. You have to understand, you'll see, because we're just entering the dream land. [17]
FELD: (laughing) Okay, well, before we get too far into dream land (laughter), maybe we should let the audience have some questions. We're going to go increasingly into dreamland now, in the next three films. This [story] relates to Madame de l'eau which is the last of the films that begins with Petit à petit. So this relationship and the improvisation and the dreams and the travels with Damouré and Lam continue and will continue in the next films. Okay let's let some people have some questions.
Rouch: Yes, okay. But I'll finish the story before I forget. (laughter) So, when Tallou came, he posed a question which was very interesting. Some people here maybe know the Indian musical Mandala, fille des Indes. [18] The film was a fantastic success in Niger because the song of Mandala is close to the Bella language. So the Bella – Tallou – could translate Mandala's songs. So we all learned something very interesting. So, in my story, there is man who starts to sing