Pourquoi une Chien? A Kataleptic Phantasmatic Romance (2010)

Pourquoi une Chien? recounts the narrative voice-over of French filmmaker Jean Rouch's ethnographic film, Les Maitres Fous (The Mad Masters, 1955), that documents the Ghanaian Hauka cult, whose members would convene outside the city to enter a trance-like state and become possessed of the spirits of their colonial administrators. The rapidly scrolling subtitles are disrupted by intimate shots of a small, scruffy dog, seen quivering and twitching in a low theatrical light. The disjunction between word and image becomes more restless as the violent ritual unfolds.