Jean
Rouch: Le maitre fou |
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This website began as the hope of four students and their teacher in a summer course - CM/AN 364: Media and Ethnography - at the American University of Paris in 2004. With Rouch's passing that winter, Professor Tanya Elder encouraged us to pay special attention to his role within the practice of ethnographic filmmaking. It was an auspicious time to do so, as the Musée de l'Homme in Paris was holding a retrospective of his films while our course was taking place. Given the scant amount of literature available about Rouch on-line, the website was suggested by Dr. Elder. I developed the website as my "senior project" while at A.U.P. and, with the help of my classmates and Dr. Elder, have tried to create a fairly thorough introduction to Rouch's work. |
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Because distribution of his films has been such a huge problem, Rouch's work has remained largely unavailable and, therefore, unknown to an anglophone audience (to French audiences as well, for that matter). Happily this is slowly beginning to change. You can now purchase several of his well known ethno-fictions, as well as some of his other ethnographic work, on DVD (zone 2) at Amazon.fr. You can also now find several interveiws along with some of his work on youtube. |
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| As early as the 1940's, Rouch used filmmaking as a means to promote cross-cultural dialogue as well as a rethinking of the relationship between "the West" and "the Rest". For over sixty years, Rouch continued to cultivate that dialogue and the result is a body of work that can perhaps best be described as an antidote for visual apathy. Because much of his work requires a reconfiguration of our viewing habits, it compels us to address certain misconceptions and prejudices (be they aesthetic or cultural) that we are perhaps unaware we are housing. His films encourage more questions than they answer, they upset the balance, and they work to release us from our own limited and narrow cinematic expectations. In researching his films and writings, I have come to a very deep appreciation, not only for Rouch's work, but also for the man he seems to have been. His tremendous body of work stands as a testament to his belief in friendship, his admiration for cultures so different from his own, his sense of humor and adventure, his remarkable erudition, and his keen aesthetic eye. Please enjoy perusing the site at your leisure. I have created a glossary of "Rouchian" terms for those of you who are totally new to Rouch and his oeuvre. In the filmography section of the website I have reviewed several of his films. These reviews, along with those of my A.U.P. classmates, can be found by clicking on the titles which are hyperlinked. - J.S.B.
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