Centrafrique : la vie, la mort, les vaches
Alain Bankas, Pierre Barrot
1995 - 26 min - Betacam SP - France

In Central Africa, the Peulh stockbreeders are different people. Sahelian Muslim nomads, they live on the Bantu land, the Bantus being sedentary christian or animist farmers. With several million beasts they keep alive in spite of disastrous sanitary conditions, the Bororo Peulhs (from the name of their huge zebus), have become the first economical force of the country. This film is a document about the daily life of these herdsmen of the big deserts who chose to live in the heart of the tropical forest. There they have built their "Centrafican Empire".
However, their powerful federation, attacked by corruption and thwarted by the present authorities is no longer a State inside the State. On the bush tracks, in the shadow of the big gallery-forests where the terrible tsetse fly was already raging, the Bororos must face new enemies generated by the economical crisis : the "off-cutters", the highwaymen.