26 minutes of drumming hands that'll rewire your brain on rhythm itself.
The young goat herders from the cliff of Bandiagara practice on the stone drums of their ancestors. An ethnomusicological film experiment describing the subtle plays of the right and left hand of Dogon drummers.
Direction
Rouch and co. invented visual ethnomusicography—every cut serves the hands.
Editing
Split-screens and close-ups that turn drumming into pure geometry.
Director
Germaine Dieterlen
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Dogon drums are communication tools for funeral rites—each rhythm signals specific clan relationships and spiritual transitions.
Jean Rouch shot this during his decades-long Dogon fieldwork; he considered cinema a form of 'shared anthropology' where filming became collaborative research.
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