Damouré Zika

Mariama and Damouré, two cousins, are in Venice looking for a relic—or fetish—lost a long time ago, as in one of Gentile Bellini’s famous paintings. Moving from the Grand Canal to the Niger River, the two mischievous cousins reveal to us that the relic is none other than the ritual ax of Dongo.

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".

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.

Jaguar, a kind of road movie on foot, tells of the journey of three friends, Damouré, Lam and Illo, on their way to the Gold Coast where they hope to make a fortune in order to return to their village in a few months.

The subject of the film was the Hauka movement. The Hauka movement consisted of mimicry and dancing to become possessed by French Colonial administrators. The participants performed the same elaborate military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers, but in more of a trance than true recreation.

"Mammy Water" is mother sea, source of food. Jean Rouch filmed this short documentary in the Gulf of Guinea, in Ghana, where is held a colorful festival, the Chama, in which the participants offer cassava, gin and tobacco to the spirits of water and sacrifice a white ox to thank them and express their gratitude and respect.

The gods have declared the drought of the country. There seems to be no hope. A holy man summoned by the king requires the sacrifice of a young woman to put an end to their anger. A young man in love decides to go in search of water to save the girl from a tragic end, but when he returns with good news it's too late: the genie had his satisfaction and Toula has already disappeared in the holy swamp.

After an unsuccessful attempt in 1946 to film a traditional bangaoui (hippopotamus hunt) on the Niger River, Jean Rouch returns several years later to document the ritual in full. The film records the ceremonial preparations, spiritual practices, and seasonal hunt conducted by Sorko fishermen, situating the event within its cultural and ritual context rather than as spectacle.