A young French civil engineer arrives in Niamey, in Niger, fresh off the war. He’s trained in building bridges, literally, but by now he’s become used to blowing them up – it’s 1941 and everyone needs to adapt. Back home, an unspeakable winter has taken his city hostage.
He is not a fearful, cowardly man. When the resistance fails – and the intimate occupation begins – the moral ambiguity of colonial France provides the necessary escape route to the shadow lands of Africa, the paradox extended across the ocean in what he will later call “the symphony of the desolation of the world”. As a student, he was known for his love of elegant mathematical solutions. As a colonial officer he will trespass on sacred ground, and learn of a different power. As a filmmaker, Jean Rouch will dare to look straight into the mirror, “with his indefatigable imagination, humour, and poetic surrealist appetite”.
Becoming your enemy is the deadliest and most effective strategy at your disposal, and one that should be avoided at any cost. The consequences for both parties are poisonous, long-lasting, handed down to future generations in a seemingly endless chain of hurt and insanity. The Hauka method should therefore be considered your last source of remedy.