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Cock-a-doodle-doo Mister Rouch!

In Cannes 1961, sixty years ago, the film "Chronique d'un été" (Chronicle of a Summer), co-directed with Edgar Morin, received the Grand Prix of the Critics' Week. On the occasion of the Cannes Film Festival 2021, CNRS Images presents a special Jean Rouch selection.

Jean Rouch and, on the left, his friend and actor Damouré Zika (around 1960)

"How do you live?" is the central idea of the 1961 award-winning film. It is about knowing how each person "manages with life", explains Edgar Morin to Marceline Loridan at the beginning of the film. Rouch and Morin - as they call themselves - ask Marceline to go out and meet people to ask them the crucial question "are you happy?" A monument of cinéma vérité ("truthful cinema").

In 1991, the French radio France Culture created a series of 25 episodes during which Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin and the people filmed are interviewed. In 2011, Edgar Morin remade a long version (6 hours) with commentary of the film, as he had originally wanted, from rushes found in a cupboard at the CNRS...

Several films of Jean Rouch were presented at Cannes, and in particular Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet ("Cock-a-doodle-do! Mister Chicken") that we propose you to (re)see here in a new version digitized by the French National Center for cinema (Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, CNC). We also present a new long version of Sigui 1967-1973 and one of Moi fatigué debout, moi couché ("Me tired standing, me lying down"). The CNC website gathers other films and notably an extract of Chronique d'un été: https://www.cnc.fr/cinema/actualites/jean-rouch-en-cinq-films_1205709

For the pleasure of listening to Jean Rouch and seeing him work, we also offer you films dedicated to this ethnologist filmmaker.

See and review the films of Jean Rouch in the CNRS Images archives

See the Multimedia portrait in Sagascience (only in French)

Autour d'un vase hampi (film «Moi fatigué debout, moi couché», 1997)

CNRS News article "Jean Rouch: a film-maker, ethnologist and explorer"

Jean Rouch examines elements that could be used to restore certain films by Jean Rouch, before transferring them to his laboratory. He''s on the top floor of building I at the Meudon Bellevue campus, where the exploration workshop was located.

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Lam decides to set off into the bush in an old van with an assistant, to sell chickens. When a third person joins the group, the organization of the trip begins to look even more precarious.

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This exhibition presents the photograms of Jean Rouch's films taken from the 16mm films rolls he loved to work with. There are no doubt few such images considering his filmography of around 180 films which include his finished films and also half of his films which remained unfinished.

Film for consultation only

During the shooting of Jean Rouch's "Dyonisos", G. Dieterlen, E. Fulchignoni and other participating friends recall their meeting and their research with the filmmaker.

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Only available for non-commercial distribution

More than forty years ago, Jean Rouch developed a practice at the crossroads of human sciences and film making: visual anthropology. On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the filmmaker and anthropologist, researchers Laetitia Merli, Philippe Lourdou, Nadine Wanono and Boris Petric discuss the legacy left by Jean Rouch in this discipline. Fascinated by technology, Rouch very early on seized upon the technological developments that made cameras increasingly lighter to film the…

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Lam decides to set off into the bush in an old van with an assistant, to sell chickens. When a third person joins the group, the organization of the trip begins to look even more precarious.

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