Jean Rouch – Cocorico Monsieur Poulet AKA Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Mister Chicken (1974)
The story follows three poultry sellers on a trip across the bush, attempting to deliver a load of chickens to a market in Niamey. When a third person joins the group, the organization of the trip begins to look even more precarious.
Quote:
It is in relation to Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet (1974), where once again the “Rouch gang” undertook an adventure, that both Rouch’s way of filming and his deep politics clearly reveal themselves. His greatest popular success in Africa and perhaps the most fun to make, the film is a “collective improvisation on a Nigerian fable”. Lam, an itinerant chicken merchant at the time, Damouré and Tallou Mouzourine (who also did the music), go through the bush with the real star of the film, Lam’s car, a “patience mobile” that endlessly breaks down, provoking an equal number of step by step improvised solutions and improvised filming. Cocorico had its American premiere at the Margaret Mead Film Festival and Cineaste suggested that for those unfamiliar with the African situation, what they saw seemed to reinforce basic prejudices against Africa. It seemed that the Africans treated their car like stereotyped “dumb hillbillies” would, the type “used as comic relief in Hollywood films and on American television”. While the interviewers themselves might seem a little “rabid”, their criticisms very “of the period” (Feld notes that this interchange has an “edge” the other interviews do not), similar objections could easily be put today by those wanting their documentaries to expose political-economic realities, to picture third world people with dignity – and surely not joke like this. People are aware, say Cineaste, that Africa is in transition, but in this film “there doesn’t seem to be anything positive going on, concretely or in consciousness” (…)
Cock-a-doodle-doo!.Mister.Chicken.1977.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 1 h 33 min
Size: 1.45 GiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 716x480 ~> 716x537
Aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate: 25.000 fps
Bit rate: 2 000 kb/s
BPP: 0.233
Audio
#1: French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s
Language(s):French
Subtitles:English
