[3][4][5][6] Rouch began his long association with Nigerien subjects in 1941, when he arrived in Niamey as a French colonial hydrology engineer to supervise a construction project in Niger.

In 1950, Rouch started to use Zika as the central character of his films, registering the traditions, culture, and ecology of the people of the Niger River valley.

The first film in which Zika appeared was Bataille sur le grand fleuve (1950–52), portraying the life, ceremonies and hunting of Sorko fishermen.

[13] Despite arriving as a colonialist in 1941, Rouch remained in Niger after independence and mentored a generation of Nigerien filmmakers and actors, including Zika.

Zika helped reedit the film, originally a silent ethnographic piece, into a feature-length movie somewhere between documentary and fiction (docufiction), and provided dialogue and commentary for a 1969 release.

In 1957 Rouch directed Moi, un noir in Côte d'Ivoire with the young Nigerien filmmaker Oumarou Ganda, who had recently returned from French military service in Indochina.

Rouch and Jean-Michel Arnold founded an international documentary film festival, the Cinéma du Réel, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1978.

In 1996, following the election of Nelson Mandela, Rouch visited the Centre for Rhetoric Studies at the University of Cape Town at Philippe-Joseph Salazar's invitation.