法國

In Jaguar, Damoure, Lam and Illo play the roles of young Africans who, at that time, migrated from the interior during the dry season to the Gold Coast in search of work. Their picuresque and rambling adventures along the way provide the antic story-line of the film. The different episodes of the film were worked out by the actors at the time of shooting. Lam (the herdsman), Illo (the fisherman) and Damoure (unsettled but literate) trek south through Dahomey to Ghana, crossing the “Land of the Somba,” enjoying coconuts, the ocean and starfish. They part ways: Damoure and Illo go to Accra where they find work as a dockworker and lumberman while Lam goes to Kumasi and works as a cattle herder for a butcher. Eventually, they regroup in Kumasi and with another friend, set up a stall in the market called “Petit a Petit.” They have succeeded at becoming “jaguars” or townboys with fancy hairdos, sunglasses, cigarettes and money. Nonetheless, they are homesick and return to Niger before the rains, happy to be reunited with their family, friends and familiar landscape.

Moi, Un Noir was Rouch’s first feature length film. Shot in Treichville, a slum/suburb of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, the film continues many of the themes of earlier work (especially Jaguar and Les Maitres Fous): immigration to the coastal towns, contact of colonizers and colonized, the effects of colonialism and proletarianization. An attempt to “mix fiction with reality,” it follows the daily routine of three young men from Niger working as casual laborers in Abidjan. The characters were asked to play out their lives in front of the camera. In a sense, the characters are seen as already living out “fictional reality” in Treichville, far from their homes and traditional lives in Niger.

This is the story of the last two Jews in Afghanistan. All the other Jews have left a long time ago. Isaac and Zabulon live alone in the abandoned synagogue…

For the past ten years, Zabulon and Isaac, the two remaining Jews in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, have been living in the courtyard of Kabul’s old synagogue. The elderly Isaac lives on the ground floor and makes a living by selling amulets to his Muslim neighbors. Middle-aged Zebulon lives on the top floor and haggles with the same Afghans over his illegally produced wine. There is no love lost between them; the two Jews systematically abuse and insult each other at every turn. Isaac is happy to divulge the fact that Zebulon collaborated with the Taliban and bribed them with financial and oenological favors. Zebulon, for his part, claims that Isaac converted to Islam; why else would he be called “Mollah Isaac?”