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Cultures-Haïti

Jaguar

  • Jaguar
Genre : Drama
Type : Fiction
Original title :
Principal country concerned : Column : Cinema/tv, History/society
Year of production : 1953
Format : Feature
Running time : 130 (in minutes)

The African cousins of Bibi Fricotin, Lam the shepherd, Illo the fisherman and Damouré the womanising horseman leave their village to make their fortune in Ghana, then return to tell lies.
The archetype of a friendly cinema, almost family made, born by a ciné-troop applying to the seventh art the practice of automatic writing and free jazz. Obviously it's Rouch himself who is travelling here, and for whom any pretext is an excuse to make the plot more delirious.

Three friends, Lam the herdsman, Illo the fisherman and Damouré, the public letter writer, decide to travel to Accra to make their fortune. The three friends leave on foot and after illegally crossing the border they part in three separate directions, as advised by the spirits. Illo becomes a fisherman with the Ewe and Lam a seller of perfumes. Damouré arrives in Accra, where starts out as a dockworker, before going on rapidly to become a man of fashion, a "jaguar", with a city lifestyle: the races, street dancing, Hauku cult rituals. In the city he meets Illo and they go off together in search of Lam who, with his friend Douma, has started a market stall. One evening they decide to go back to the village, where they hand out in one day what they have earned over several months. They have nothing left, but they are the lords of their village. Life returns to normal: Douma the miner becomes a farmer once again, Lam a herdsman, Illo a fisherman and Damouré, the dandy, tries to seduce the village girls.

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