Jaguar (1967)

93 min   |   Jean Rouch   | Presented by Professor Ousseina Alidou (African Languages, Rutgers University) | 3:00 pm | Gilman 50

Jaguar follows the picaresque adventures of Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia, and Illo Gaoudel, three young men from Niger who set off to find their fortune in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in the early fifties. Two find jobs in Accra, while the third opens a business in the sprawling market in Kumasi; all three become “jaguars,” gentlemen bachelors walking the city streets on the lookout for romance. Shot in 1954, completed in 1967, and technically Jean Rouch’s first feature film, Jaguar abounds with a youthful energy shared by the film- maker and his friends in front of the camera. With this exhilarating experiment, Rouch developed his method of “ethno-fiction,” in which he collaborated with his subjects to improvise fictional scenes in a documentary setting and later invited the “actors” to add voiceover commentary. All three actors have the gift of gab and a high-spirited, self-mocking sense of humor, which make Jaguar both an exuberant comedy and a whirlwind tour of the life of West African economic migrants in the fifties. This mosaic of short hand held shots is also a bold departure from the standards of ethnographic filmmaking, both scruffy and stylish, and relentlessly optimistic.