Programme 5

Erik R. Knudsen

Denmark, Danish, silent, 1950, 12 min

 

Jean Rouch

France, French, 1965, 81 min

What was hunting without unequalising rifles like? What was nature like when we had not excluded ourselves from it? Ordinary, maybe? On the Faroe Islands it is barely possible to cultivate the land, so humans depend on animals. Animals like the common guillemot, that flying penguin which the seagulls hassled (and ate) in Trut! Here, in addition, the Faroese hassle it, descending the cliffs, at no minor risk to their lives, and hunting a few at a time. Humans, less gifted predators than seagulls, need ropes, caps (for show), a stake, a net and to be several, the one who descends and the others who secure the one who descends. And their human young learn with pride this small art, this form of relation that will not put an end to the relation: over the sea, the guillemots continue to fly in the thousands.

And now, children, gather round and listen to the story of the lion hunters with bow and arrow... On some rocks, “men of before” painted themselves and painted the animals they hunted. We are close to the border between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, in “the country of nowhere”, in continuity with Altamira and its bison and South, and this story is for us, the humans of after. In the country of nowhere, nature is ordinary; farmers and shepherds coexist with lions, they call them by their name, they know them. Lions only attack sick cows. Extraordinarily, a lion kills a healthy cow and, to restore order, the Gao, the hunters, must be called upon. Preparing the hunt takes time. A lot of time. Making bows, arrows, traps, the “boto” poison. The tree that bears the fruit to make the poison grows five hundred kilometres from where they are. Off they go. Later, during the hunt, everything demands attention; a double attention, as everything is sign. They fail, stop, someone in the group dies and frees them, they recommence. And, only at the end, they hunt. And they turn each hunted animal into a deceased, they sing and ask for forgiveness, they show all kinds of considerations towards them, and Rouch films the reality of this relation, more real even than hunters and animals separately. Considerations towards what one kills and eats, precisely because one kills and eats. The Gao will return home with a heart pierced by an arrow, the story will be shared into more stories, when the children grow up, no one will hunt the lion with bow and arrow anymore.