Jean Rouch, 1918-2004.

French filmmaker and ethnologist Jean Rouch was buried yesterday in Niamey, Niger.

Remembrances:

Cinéma vérité is a term so frequently used that it is sometimes forgotten that the main instigator of both the label and the style was the ethnological filmmaker Jean Rouch... Rejecting both the idealism of Robert Flaherty and the didacticism of Joris Ivens and John Grierson, Rouch aimed for the immediacy of television, without its superficiality. He believed that the camera's intervention stimulated people to greater spontaneity, expression and truth without asking them, as in the American Direct Cinema, to act as though the camera was not there.

Ronald Bergan in the Guardian.

His best-known films, The Mad Masters and I, a Black, made in the 1950s, presented not only a new ethnographic view of Africa to French audiences, but also demonstrated to new wave directors like Jean-Luc Godard what could be done with a hand-held camera. Although he also ran the Cinémathèque Française in Paris from 1987 to 1991, Africa was always Mr. Rouch's first love.

Alan Riding in the New York Times.

In the landmark Chronicle of a Summer, Rouch and his co-director Edgar Morin asked Parisians the simple question, "Are you happy?" The answers created a stunning document of contemporary life in the city.

Eugene Hernandez in indieWIRE.

I still remember how uncomfortable I felt watching Les Maîtres fous (The Mad Masters, 1955) in college. The images of Hauka priests undergoing spirit possession were terrifying but also sort of funny and strange. The film provoked a heated discussion: Was it racist? Was it anti-Colonialist?

Matt Haber in low culture.

After studying me for a while, the legendary filmmaker embraced me as if he were my uncle. He was attentive to the point of walking me to a taxi and giving strict instructions to the driver. Then, with a friendly but hard punch to my chest, he sent me off to my field work.... Did his documentary films "penetrate the intimacy of daily life as it is really lived," in the words of his colleague Edgar Morin? Did they make inroads in the "cinematic catalepsy" offered us by conventional, big-studio productions? Big words, tall orders, perhaps false questions. Rouch did what he loved doing, and it was inspired, fueled by passion and not without consequence.

Salut!

Edgardo Krebs in the Washington Post.

Posted by dwhudson at February 25, 2004 8:25 AM