African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 265
also fascinating. In this extraordinary film, Marshall accumulated footage over a thirtyyear
period and focused on the life of !Nai, a wonderful character, who analyzes in the
film the dramatic change in the life of the !Kung after they were removed from their
nomadic life and relocated on a government settlement. The film acknowledges
reflexivity, as it documents the impact of film shooting in an “exotic” environment.
Funeral Rituals
As funerals are a major public event and, most of the time, spectacular feasts (at least
when the defunct is an elder), they have often been filmed. Jean Rouch, sometimes with
the help of Germaine Dieterlen, has made many films on Dogon funerals. Cemetery in the
Cliff; filmed in 1951, follows the Dogon funeral ritual of a man who died in the village of
Ireli. Funerals in Bongo—Anai Dolo 1848–1970, chronicles the funeral of an elder of the
masks society, who was reputed to be 122 years old. The Burial of the Hogon (1972)
describes the funeral rites as the Hogon, the paramount religious leader of the Sanga
region dies and is buried. The hunter-warriors gather near the deceased priest’s house and
simulate a battle, using guns, spears, or millet stalks, while the body is placed in a sacred
cave. The shooting of Ambara Dama (1974), is a remarkable story: Ambara had given the
information on the funeral rituals (Dama) to Marcel Griaule, the initiator of a huge
ethnographic project on the Dogon. Years later, and years after Griaule’s death, his
former student, Jean Rouch, uses the book to film the funeral of Ambara. Interestingly
enough, in 1956, François de Dieu had filmed the Dogon Funerals of Professor Marcel
Griaule, as the Dogon celebrated the memory of the man who studied their customs for
so many years. Rouch also made some films on funeral rituals (Pam Kuso Kar, 1974;
Souna Kuma, 1975; Simiri Siddo Kuma, 1978). He eventually filmed Moro Naba (1957),
the funeral ceremony of the traditional leader of the Mossi of the Ouagadougou region in
Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). The film contains the election ceremonies for the
successor, the feast for the end of mourning, and the ceremony in the palace, with
warriors in traditional dress. The procession is extraordinary, with the elder daughter and
elder son incarnating the defunct chief in different parts of the ritual, as does a wood
statue carried by the dancers.
In Voubira, among the Lobi of Burkina Faso, Fiéloux and Lombard have filmed the
mourning for Bindouté Da, a prominent, “traditional” chief and a colonial agent. His
nineteen wives prepare a huge quantity of millet beer to welcome the guests. A diviner
transmits the ultimate will of the defunct chief. His children mime his life history, and the
filmmakers evoke his life too, using archives and family photographs (Bindouté Da’s
Bobur, 1988). Minyanka Funerals, from the Diary of a Dry Season (1987) series, shows
the funerals of an old woman who had an important function in a possession cult. At
midnight, a possessed man, incarnating the deity of that particular cult, weeps and
laments over the corpse
Two years after his father’s death, the Cameroonese director François Woukoache
filmed the ceremonies that take place at the end of the traditional mourning period, which
provided him with an opportunity to examine the Bamileke legacy and the Christian
identity of many young people in Cameroon today (Melina, 1992). Among the Massa in
North Cameroon, young men, called guru, or sacred herders, perform a special ritual