Eight Films by Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch was an inspiration for the French New Wave (in 1968 Jacques Rivette would say "Rouch is the force behind all French cinema of the past ten years"), and a revolutionary force in ethnography and the study of Africa.

From 1946 when he made his first film in Niger, until his death in 2004, Rouch made more than 100 films, most on African subjects, including the seven which are the focus of this boxed-set.

Beginning in 1955 with his most controversial film THE MAD MASTERS (Les Maîtres fous), through 1969's darkly comic LITTLE BY LITTLE, these films represent the most sustained flourishing of Rouch's practice of "shared anthropology," a process of collaboration with his subjects.

Astonishing on their own terms, now restored and released for the first time, EIGHT FILMS BY JEAN ROUCH is essential for anyone interested in better understanding the development of ethnography and the cross-currents of colonialism and post-colonial social change in Africa, as well as documentary film practice, film history, and world cinema as a whole.

Disc One:
The Mad Masters (Les Maîtres fous) 1955 / 28 minutes
A Hauka possession ceremony doubles as a theatrical protest against Ghana's colonial rulers

Mammy Water 1956 / 18 minutes
The spiritual traditions of a fishing village on the Gulf of Guinea.

Moi, Un Noir 1958 / 70 minutes
A complex portrait of Nigerian migrants in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast.

Disc Two:
The Human Pyramid 1961 /
In a mixed class at an Abidjan high school the students act a drama which would change and evolve according to their wishes and reactions.

The Lion Hunters 1965 / 77 minutes
Lion hunting with bow and arrow, among the Songhay people of Niger and Mali.

Disc Three:
Jaguar 1967 / 88 minutes
Three Nigerian men journey to Accra to look for work.

Little By Little 1969 / 92 minutes
Jean Rouch's Nigerian collaborators travel to France to perform a reverse ethnography of late-1960's Parisian life.