Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet

1977 Nigerien film

19 January 1977 (1977-01-19)

Running time

93 minutesCountryNigerLanguagesFrench
Fula
Hausa

Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet ([ko.ko.ʁi.ko mə.sjø pu.lɛ], "Cock-a-doodle-do! Mister Chicken") is a 1977 Franco-Nigerien road movie by "Dalarou", a pseudonym for Damouré Zika, Lam Ibrahim Dia and Jean Rouch.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

Production

Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet was filmed in and around Niamey, Niger on 16 mm film in 1974. Much of the film was improvised.^[5] Damouré Zika used the money he made from Petit à petit (1970) to buy the Citroën 2CV featured in the film.^[6]

Synopsis

Lam, owner of a home-built Citroën 2CV named “Patience”, and his apprentice Tallou, drive into the countryside to buy chickens to sell in Niamey. Damouré, an opportunist, joins them on this one-day trip. They encounter adversity, a "demon", and are forced to make multiple crossings of the Niger River.^[7]

Reception

Rembert Hüser wrote that in Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet "the technology fetish of Western society gets thoroughly dismantled."^[8]

References

^ "COCORICO MONSIEUR POULET - Festival de Cannes".
^ Stoller, Paul (June 15, 1992). The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226775463 – via Google Books.
^ Brink, Joram Ten (November 24, 2007). Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch. Wallflower Press. ISBN 9781905674473 – via Google Books.
^ "Au Niger, sur les traces de Jean Rouch – Jeune Afrique". September 12, 2016.
^ Mouellic, Gilles (April 15, 2014). Improvising cinema. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 9789048518425 – via Google Books.
^ Henley, Paul (November 24, 2009). The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226327143 – via Google Books.
^ "Cocorico ! Monsieur Poulet". Le Monde diplomatique. April 1, 2007.
^ Prager, Brad (May 21, 2012). A Companion to Werner Herzog. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781405194402 – via Google Books.