The Mad Masters

Filmed it Accra, Ghana, in 1954, the film depicts the annual ceremony of the Hauku cult, a social and religious movement which was widespread in French colonial Africa from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Participants in the ceremony mimic the elaborate military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers, but in more of a trance than true recreation.

Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch is one of the most important anthropologists and representatives of ethnographic cinema, who also contributed greatly to the evolution of the French New Wave and cinéma vérité. With his richly varied work, the greater part of which was filmed in Africa, he broadened the ethnographic documentary’s horizons and set the foundation for the creation of ethnofiction, which blurred the boundaries between documentary and fiction.