Les Maitres Fous / Mammy Water

2 shorter documentary films from the French ethnologist and cineaste, Jean Rouch
Les Maitres Fous (1956, ’28): This is a quite remarkable work. With short cuts, a camera that seems to be hungry to grab every aspect, as though in disbelief, swinging around and dodging quickly, an incredible ritual is played out. There is no truth in colonialism, but if there is of colonialism, perhaps this is it; the psychological consequences (cf. Fanon) make a kind of sick, stumbling parody of the colonial situation. The strength of each shot, desperate to fill it with the white, the red, the intense focus on every single bodily aspect of the ritual.
The film almost descends to the madness, the foaming and the bacchanal we see, but is held together by the stern, almost desperate voiceover that somehow manages to lend a kind of unity to the chaos of proceedings. This is real unity is difference, for nothing is reconciled by this. Simply reading off a ‘West-Guilty’ narrative is too easy, as the inhuman aspect at once overwhelms, but overcomes itself; there is something horribly knowing, above it all, even of those that could be dismissed as to be pitied, in their adherence to ritual. There is something incredibly true about the ritual; is it our own truth, or theirs, and thus inaccessible?
One of the most remarkable features is the juxtaposition of the mythic and the modern, the magical rituals with the order and the ostensibly developed features. When we see the same people back in their ‘normal’ jobs, it is quite moment, and cast doubts on both sides of the supposed unity of what a person can be. This piece is really quite something.
Mammy Water (1956, ’18): Again with wonderful saturated colours, deep reds and blues, Rouch holds together, among the quite quickly laid out features, almost a narrative from the simply fascinating footage he makes. The voiceover gives an order, must it does not (or at least appears not to) dictate one. We are left with some terrific images, with the firm gaze that is given to each moment holding it in time, ignoring the rules of the classical composition to create tableaus around the objects and people who were once ignored.