Nomads of the Sun / Bororo / Les nomades du soleil (1954) dir. Henry Brandt

Record of the life of the Peulh Bororo people who live a nomadic life between the Sahara and the Niger River. The case of Henri Brandt is different: he was a filmmaker who came to ethnography in order to make a film in Africa. After a preparatory mission among the Peul bororo nomads of Niger, Professor Gabus, director of the ethnographic museum at Neuchatel, sent Brandt out to the field for a year alone with these savannah pastoralists. Working in 16mm, Brandt brought back an extremely valuable document, accompanied by remarkably well recorded location sound. Brandt’s Les Nomades du Soleil remains a classic film, even though it has never been distributed commercially. (Jean Rouch, The Situation and Tendencies of the Cinema in Africa)