Rouch was asked by a small group in Ghana to film their annual ceremony of the West African religion, Hauku. Although its roots lie in traditional possession cults common in the area, during the Hauku ritual the participants entered into a trance and became possessed by a variety of spirits associated with the Western colonial powers. Thus attempts were made to suppress the ritual from its inception in the 1920s; by 1954, in Ghana it was restricted to Saturdays and Sundays. In his commentary, Rouch attempts to reverse our perception of the "exotic" so that what appears bizarre is not this ritual (which does include the slaughter of a dog) but the colonial administration that engendered it.