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The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema

Online ISBN:
9780226327167
Print ISBN:
9780226327143
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema

Published:
1 February 2010
Online ISBN:
9780226327167
Print ISBN:
9780226327143
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred films, both documentary and fiction, and exerted an influence far beyond academia. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Rouch's practical filmmaking methods, which he developed while conducting anthropological research in West Africa in the 1940s–1950s. His innovative use of unscripted improvization by his subjects had a profound impact on the French New Wave, the author reveals, while his documentary work launched the genre of cinema-vérité. In addition to tracking Rouch's pioneering career, the author examines the technical strategies, aesthetic considerations, and ethical positions that contribute to Rouch's cinematographic legacy.

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