Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch (31 May 1917 - 18 February 2004) 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 Morin used 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

External links

Biographical details and filmography

* [http://der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php The Jean Rouch Tribute Website: bio, tributes, complete filmography, audio, film clips]
* [http://www.citwf.com/person366781.htm Jean Rouch] at The Complete Index To World Film since 1895
*imdb name|id=0745541|name= Jean Rouch
* [http://www.maitres-fous.net/ Maitres-fous.net : A website devoted to the study of Jean Rouch's films]

Articles about Jean Rouch

* [http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Rouch.htm Biography] by Ben Michaels

* [http://www.der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php?id=about Jean Rouch, filmmaker] - article by Brenda Baugh

* [http://www.indiewire.com/people/people_040224rouch.html "Verite Pioneer Jean Rouch"] by Eugene Hernandez at "indieWIRE"

* [http://www.clas.ufl.edu/jur/200004/papers/paper_karp.html Jean Rouch: Cinematic Griot] by Amie Karp at "Journal of Undergraduate Research"

* [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/rouch.html "Jean Rouch: Cinéma-vérité, Chronicle of a Summer and The Human Pyramid"] by Barbara Bruni

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* [http://www.societyforvisualanthropology.org/2008symposium_rouch.html International Jean Rouch SYMPOSIUM] (Society of Visual Anthropology)

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