Jean Rouch Movies

On the Niger River, the island of Ayorou is home to a “singing stone,” an imposing boulder rock covered with cupules. It is used as a...

The fifth year of the Sigui ceremonies, celebrated every sixty years by the Dogons of the Bandiagara cliffs, Mali, takes place in the village of...

This film, made in one afternoon, is an "inspired promenade," the discovery of an exhibition with improvised text and commentary. Five shot sequences...

Every five years, the mask society of the Dogons of Sanga, Mali, organizes a great Dama, a ceremony to end the period of mourning and drive away "the...

Funeral rituals for the traditional leader Moro Naba of the Mossi at Ougadougou, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). Election ceremonies for his...

In the village of Simiri, Niger, fisherman Daouda is also a priest of the cult of Dongo, the god of Thunder for the Songhay people. He tells the...

A film by Jean Rouch.

Jean Rouch’s camera follows his friend, filmmaker/actor/critic Farrokh Ghaffari, as he walks and talks us through the famous Shah Mosque in...

Directed by Jean Rouch.

Rouch’s earliest surviving film, which depicts the Sorko of Niger on a hippopotamus hunt. - MoMA

Traditional houses and new architecture in Ayorou, an island on the River Niger in the archipelago of Tillaberi. The village and its activities; the...

Directed by Jean Rouch.

Not much film stock, an inspired camera, a meditation on time, period songs: using contemporary images, shot at a time when the broken city was...

Jean Rouch's return to Niger, to meet his African friends and the play "Perses" by Aeschylus provide him with the opportunity to relate his Dionysian...

The third year of the Sigui ceremonies, celebrated every sixty years by the Dogons of the Bandiagara cliffs, Mali, takes place in the village of...

Dogon funerary rites in the village of Ireli at the foot of the Bandiagara cliffs, Mali.

Scene of possession during a ceremony to appeal for rain in Niger.

A Nigerian traditionalist who draws his inspiration from bird warbling to compose music to accompany his verse chronicles.