6 mins., b&w, silent – French titles and intertitles
Source : CNC at BnF
Background – This short film by Jean d’Esme and René Moreau was clearly made at the same time as À travers le Cameroun, le Gabon et le Congo, and particularly at the time that they were shooting the Brazzaville mass marriage sequence since the bearded priest who ‘saves’ a young girl for a Christian marriage in that sequence appears in this film as well.
Film content – Self-evidently, fictionalised, Fétichisme purports to show how a ‘sorcerer’ identifies the witch responsible for the sickness of a young boy. This involves a frenetic ceremony during which poison is given to two people, one of whom dies and is therefore presumed to be the guilty party. However, before the ceremony is concluded, the priest turns up and disperses the crowd, confiscating the small wooden statues that had served as the sorcerer’s fetishes.