Les maîtres fous / The Mad Masters

Finally with Les maîtres fous we land in Ghana, 1969, during the annual major ceremonies of the Hauka, the spirits of power, in Accra. The colonial theme appears again in a film of the French filmmaker Jean Rouch, in which we see entranced participants of the Hauka de-articulating the influence of the British by acting ‘possessed’ by different colonial figures. Les maîtres fous filmed by Rouch are a powerful image of collective retrieval of evil in a modern Ghana and perhaps a mystification.

(Introduction by Solvej Helweg Ovesen & Melvin Moti)