Cock-a-doodle-doo Mister Rouch!

"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.