Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1969 • 92 minutes
When we re-join Rouch's collaborators Zika and Ibrahim in Ayorou, Niger, the Little By Little company they had formed at the conclusion of JAGUAR has become a large import-export company. Hearing that a competitor is building a multistory building in Niamey, the directors of the company decide they must construct their own in Ayorou.
Zika flies to Paris to study the city's skyscrapers and meet with architects for advice. His mission quickly broadens into a full-fledged investigation of French life, the methods of which begin to suspiciously resemble those of imperialist European anthropology, and give a darkly comic charge to the proceedings.
Ibrahim eventually joins Zika in France, and the pair fall into their own version of contemporary European life, along the way picking up Senegalese clothing designer, a white French typist, and a hobo, all of whom return with them to Niger to work for Little By Little.
"A truly mesmerizing, frequently hilarious, and provocative masterpiece."—Eric Kohn, Cineaste
Up Next in The Sixties
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Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1967 • 108 minutes
On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costum...
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Directing Actors by Jean Renoir
Directed by Gisèle Braunberger • Documentary • 1968 • 22 minutes
Actor Gisèle Braunberger sits across a small table from Jean Renoir. She leans forward, focusing intently on the director, her hands rhythmically fidgeting, as he outlines the premise of the script page he is about to work through ...
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Rocky Road to Dublin
Directed by Peter Lennon • Documentary • With Seán Ó Faoláin, Conor Cruise O’Brien, John Houston • 1967 • 67 minutes
ROCKY ROAD TO DUBLIN is a provocative and revealing portrait of Ireland in the Sixties, a society characterized by a stultifying educational system, a morally repressive and polit...
