Jean Rouch (31 May1917 - 18 February2004) was a French filmmaker
and anthropologist.
He began his long association with African subjects in
1941 after working as civil engineer supervising a construction project in Niger. However,
shortly afterwards he returned to France to participate in the Resistance.
After the war, he did a brief stint as a journalist with Agence France-Presse before returning to
Africa where he become an influential anthropologist and sometimes
controversial filmmaker.
He is considered as one the pioneers of Nouvelle
Vague, of visual anthropology and the father of ethnofiction.
Rouch's films mostly belonged to the cinéma vérité school – a term that Edgar Morinused in a 1960 France-Observateur article referring to Dziga
Vertov's Kinopravda. His best known film, one of the central works of the
Nouvelle Vague, is Chronique d'un été (1961) which he filmed
with sociologist Edgar Morin and in which he portrays the social life of
contemporary France. Throughout his career, he used his camera to report on
life in Africa.
Over the course of five decades, he made almost 120 films.
He died in an automobile accident in February
2004, some 16
kilometres from the town of Birnin N'Konni in central Niger.
Main films
- 1954: Les Maîtres Fous (The Mad Masters)
- 1955: Les
Fils de l'eau
- 1957: Jaguar
- 1958: Moi,
un noir
- 1959: La
pyramide humaine
- 1961: Chronique d'un été (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
- 1977: Ciné-portrait
de Margaret Mead
- 1979: Bougo,
les funérailles du vieil Anaï
african art / art africain / primitive art / art primitif / arts
premiers / art gallery / art tribal / tribal art / l'oeil et la main /
galerie d'art premier / Agalom / Armand Auxiètre /
www.african-paris.com / www.agalom.com
