Jean Rouch (Paris - 31 May 1917,
NigerNiger , officially the Republic of Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
- 18 February 2004) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
filmmaker and anthropologist.
He is considered to be one of the founders of the
cinéma véritéCinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics...
in France, sharing the aesthetics of the
direct cinemaDirect Cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States. It was characterized initially by filmmakers' desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the...
in the US pionered by
Richard LeacockRichard Leacock is a documentary film director and one of the pioneers of Direct Cinema.-Biography:Leacock grew up on a banana plantation in the Canary Islands , until shipped off to...
,D.A. Pennebaker and
Albert and David MayslesAlbert and David Maysles were a documentary filmmaking team whose "Direct Cinema" works include Salesman , Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens . Their 1964 film on The Beatles forms the backbone of the DVD, The Beatles: The First U.S...
. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker for over sixty years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of
shared anthropology.
Jean Rouch (Paris - 31 May 1917,
NigerNiger , officially the Republic of Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
- 18 February 2004) was a
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
filmmaker and anthropologist.
He is considered to be one of the founders of the
cinéma véritéCinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics...
in France, sharing the aesthetics of the
direct cinemaDirect Cinema is a documentary genre that originated between 1958 and 1962 in North America, principally in the Canadian province of Quebec and the United States. It was characterized initially by filmmakers' desire to directly capture reality and represent it truthfully, and to question the...
in the US pionered by
Richard LeacockRichard Leacock is a documentary film director and one of the pioneers of Direct Cinema.-Biography:Leacock grew up on a banana plantation in the Canary Islands , until shipped off to...
,D.A. Pennebaker and
Albert and David MayslesAlbert and David Maysles were a documentary filmmaking team whose "Direct Cinema" works include Salesman , Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens . Their 1964 film on The Beatles forms the backbone of the DVD, The Beatles: The First U.S...
. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker for over sixty years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of
shared anthropology. Influenced by his discovery of surealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style of
ethnofiction Ethnofiction is a neologism which mainly refers to docufiction, a blend of documentary and fiction film. It’s used in visual anthropology as ethnography. Its object is not the individual but the ethnicity, excepting when the individual represents it....
. He was also hailed by the
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema...
as one of theirs. His seminal film
Me a Black (
Moi un Noir) pionered the technique of
jump cutA jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
popularized by
Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French and Swiss filmmaker and one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave"....
. Godard said of Rouch in the
Cahiers du CinémaCahiers du cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca...
(
Notebooks on Cinema) n°94 April 1959 "In charge of research for the
Musée de l'HommeThe Musée de l'Homme was created in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. It is the descendant of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, founded in 1878. The Musée de l'Homme is a research center under the authority of various...
(
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, "Museum of Man") Is there a better definition for a filmmaker?". Along his career, Rouch was no stranger to controversy. He would often repeat "Glory to he who brings dispute".
Biography
He began his long association with
AfricanAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
subjects in 1941 after working as civil engineer supervising a construction project in
NigerNiger , officially the Republic of Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...
. However, shortly afterwards he returned to
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
to participate in the
ResistanceThe French Resistance is the collective name used for the French resistance movements which fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy Regime during World War II...
. After the war, he did a brief stint as a journalist with
Agence France-PresseAgence France-Presse is the oldest news agency in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Pierre Louette and editor-in-chief Nicolas Miletitch....
before returning to Africa where he become an influential anthropologist and sometimes controversial filmmaker.
Jean Rouch is generally considered the father of Nigerien cinema. Despite arriving as a colonialist in 1941, Rouch remained in Niger after independence, and mentored a generation of Nigerien filmmakers and actors, including
Damouré ZikaDamouré Zika was a Nigerien traditional healer, broadcaster, and film actor. Coming from a long line of traditional healers in the Sorko ethnic group of western Niger, Zika appeared in many of the films of French director Jean Rouch, becoming one of Niger's first actors...
and
Oumarou GandaOumarou Ganda was a Nigerien director and actor who brought African cinema to international attention in the 1960s and 1970s.- Life :...
.
Arriving in Niamey as a French colonial hydrology engineer in 1941, Rouch became interested in Zarma and
SonghaiThe Songhai are an ethnic group from western Africa akin to the Mandé. The Songhai language group, however, has been connected with the Nilo-Saharan language family, unlike their neighboring counterparts...
ethnology and began to film local people and their rituals.
In the 1940s he met
Damouré ZikaDamouré Zika was a Nigerien traditional healer, broadcaster, and film actor. Coming from a long line of traditional healers in the Sorko ethnic group of western Niger, Zika appeared in many of the films of French director Jean Rouch, becoming one of Niger's first actors...
the son of a Songhai/Sorko traditional healer and fisherman, near the town of Ayorou on the
Niger RiverThe Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...
. After ten Sorko workers in a construction depot which Rouch supervised were killed by a lightning strike, Zika's grandmother, a famous possession medium and spiritual advisor, presided over a ritual for the men, which Rouch later claimed sparked his desire to make enthographic film.
By 1950, Rouch had made the first films set in Niger with "
au pays des mages noirs" (1947), in 1948 "
l'initiation à la danse des possédés" and "
Les magiciens de Wanzarbé" in 1949, all of which document the spirit possession rituals of the Songhai, Zarma, and Sorko peoples who live along the Niger river.
Damouré Zika and Rouch became friends, and Rouch began in 1950 to use Zika as the focus of his films demonstration the traditions, culture, and ecology of the people of the Niger River valley. The first of 150 in which Zika appeared was "
Bataille sur le grand fleuve" (1950-52), portraying the lives, ceremonies and hunting of Sorko fishermen. Rouch spent four months traveling with Sorko fishermen in a traditional
PirogueA pirogue is a small, flat-bottomed boat of a design associated particularly with West African fishermen and the Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh. These boats are not usually intended for overnight travel but are light and small enough to be easily taken onto land...
filming the piece.
During the 1950s, Rouch began to produce longer, narrative films. In 1954 he filmed Damouré Zika in "Jaguar", as a young Songhai man traveling for work to the
Gold CoastGold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese, in 1471. Upon their arrival, they encountered a variety of African kingdoms some of whom controlled substantial...
. Filmed as a silent ethnographic piece, Zika helped re-edit the film into a feature length movie which stood somewhere between documentary and fiction, and provided dialog and commentary for a 1969 release. In 1957 Rouch directed in Cote d'Ivoire "
Moi un noir" with the young Nigerien filmaker Oumarou Ganda, who had recently returned from French military service in
IndochinaIndochina, or the Indochinese Peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly east of India, south of China.The word has French origins, Indochine, and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory to bordering countries.Historically, the countries of...
. Ganda went on to become the first great Nigerien film director and actor. By the early 1970s, Rouch, with cast, crew, and cowriting from his Nigerien collaborators, was producing full length dramatic films in Niger, such as Petit à petit ("
Little by Little" : 1971) and Cocorico Monsieur Poulet ("
Cocka-doodle-doo Mr. Chicken": 1974).
Still, many of the ethnographic films produced in the colonial era by Jean Rouch and others were rejected by African film makers because in their view they distorted African realities.
He is considered as one the pioneers of Nouvelle Vague, of
visual anthropologyVisual anthropology is a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media...
and the father of
ethnofiction Ethnofiction is a neologism which mainly refers to docufiction, a blend of documentary and fiction film. It’s used in visual anthropology as ethnography. Its object is not the individual but the ethnicity, excepting when the individual represents it....
. Rouch's films mostly belonged to the
cinéma véritéCinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics...
school – a term that
Edgar MorinEdgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist who was born in Paris on July 8, 1921 under the original name Edgar Nahoum. He is of Judeo-Spanish origin...
used in a 1960 France-Observateur article referring to
Dziga Vertov'sDziga Vertov was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories paved the way to Cinéma vérité style of documentary moviemaking....
Kinopravda. His best known film, one of the central works of the Nouvelle Vague, is
Chronique d'un étéChronique d'un été is a documentary film made during the summer of 1960 by sociologist Edgar Morin and anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch, with the esthetic collaboration of director cameraman Michel Brault. The film begins with a discussion between Rouch and Morin on whether or not it is...
(1961) which he filmed with sociologist
Edgar MorinEdgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist who was born in Paris on July 8, 1921 under the original name Edgar Nahoum. He is of Judeo-Spanish origin...
and in which he portrays the social life of contemporary France. Throughout his career, he used his camera to report on life in
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
. Over the course of five decades, he made almost 120 films.
With
Jean-Michel ArnoldJean-Michel Arnold, General Secretary of the Cinémathèque Française, vice President of UNESCO’s IFTC , founder of the Cinéma du Réel, Director of CNRS Image/Media, General Secretary of RIAVS, President of CAMERA, is a unique being who, without being a filmmaker, has been the instigator of some of...
he founded the international documentary film festival, the
Cinéma du RéelThe Cinéma du Réel is an international documentary film festival open to public and professionals for viewing new works by experienced documentary makers as well as first timers and an occasion to see classics in the history of documentary cinema...
at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1978.
He died in an automobile accident in February 2004, some 16 kilometres from the town of
Birni-N'KonniBirni-N'Konni , is a town in Niger, lying on the border of Nigeria and the Kori River. It is an important market town and transport hub and had a population of 44,663 at the 2001 census. The town is the historic center of the small pre-colonial Hausa state of Konni...
, Niger.
Main films
- 1949: Initiation à la danse des possédés
- 1950: Cimetière dans la falaise
- 1953: Les Fils de l'eau
- 1955: Les Maîtres Fous
Les Maîtres Fous – is a short film directed by Jean Rouch, a well-known French film director and ethnologist. It is a docufiction, his first ethnofiction, genre of which he is considered to be the creator.-Historical background:...
(The Mad Masters)
- 1955: Jaguar
- 1955: Mammy Water
- 1958: Moi, un noir
- 1959: La pyramide humaine
- 1960: Chronique d'un été
Chronique d'un été is a documentary film made during the summer of 1960 by sociologist Edgar Morin and anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch, with the esthetic collaboration of director cameraman Michel Brault. The film begins with a discussion between Rouch and Morin on whether or not it is...
(Chronicle of a Summer)
- 1965: La chasse au lion à l'arc
- 1966: Sigui année zero
- 1967: Sigui: l'enclume de Yougo
- 1968: Sigui 1968: Les danseurs de Tyogou
- 1969: Sigui 1969: La caverne de Bongo
- 1970: Sigui 1970: Les clameurs d'Amani
- 1971: Sigui 1971: La dune d'Idyeli
- 1972: Sigui 1972: Les pagnes de lame
- 1973: Sigui 1973: L'auvent de la circonsion
- 1974: Cocorico M. Poulet
- 1976: Babatu
- 1977: Ciné-portrait de Margaret Mead
- 1979: Bougo, les funérailles du vieil Anaï
- 1984: Dionysos
- 2002: Le rêve plus fort que la mort co-directed with Bernard Surugue
External links