The Jean Rouch International Film Festival is celebrating its 40th anniversary!

Françoise Héritier, an anthropologist, develops her thoughts concerning the organization of the hierarchical relations between sexes, and its origins. From her researches about relationship, she emphasises the multiple rules of alliances and filiations invented by societies.

Winner of the CNRS Gold Medal in 2001, anthropologist Maurice Godelier shares some aspects of his activities, his life, and his research. First he takes us on a field trip to the Baruya of Papua-New Guinea, among whom he worked for seven years, describing his research on kinship ties and the initiation ceremonies of the various age groups. He leads a seminar for the EHESS (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales). He impresses on his students the need to develop a true scientific…

In a remote village in the Tyva Republic in southern Siberia (Russia), Vera, a Russian shaman carries on the local religious traditions as part of a shamanic association called “The Three Summits”. She heads this association together with Baazan the widow of the late shaman grand master Kyrgys Huurak whose disciple Vera was, alongside with Anya who manages day-to-day business. Besides the main rituals performed in a shamanic outfit, the film follows Vera in her daily tasks, especially during…

Promised Memory, filmed in 2012 between the cities of Ouidah, a former slave-trading port, and Abomey, the former capital of the slave-state kingdom of Danhomé, attempts to chronicle the quest for two memories that search for each other, that intersect, that continually blend as one and separate: the memory of the transatlantic slave trade and that of cults known as voodoo. At the site of the of UNESCO Slave Route program, we observe efforts to reverse the stigmas of the past, which should…

Antoine Spire interviews Maurice Godelier, an anthropologist, a former director of the CNRS department of Humanities and Society and the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) director of studies. He was honoured by the CNRS Gold medal in 2001.

During several years of ethnographic researches on the Amazonian Indians, the Achuar, Philippe Descola, the laureate of the 2012 Gold Medal of the CNRS, studied the relationship between human beings and nature. He gradually extended his thought to other societies and redefined our own relationship with nature and with the world.

Michel Burnier, a sociologist, interviews twenty scientists from various disciplines about the future of science and culture. The number 4 of this series is dedicated to Maurice Godelier, an anthropologist.

Description of the daily lives of Eskimo hunter families spending the summer in Cape Hope, eastern Greenland.

The bourrée is a French regional folk dance. Here we see about ten of them, danced to the accordion or local bagpipes, and hear one song bourrée. Recorded in four villages of Aubrac.

In the North-West of Portugal, the owners made and use a simple and original tool: “la cana”, in order to share the irrigation water. This cana consists in a calibrated reed stick, used to measure the volumes of water. From its making to the water distribution between the different plots, the film shows the relationships between the owners thanks to this activity.

Twenty-one Sorko fishermen from the islands of Firgoun, Ayorou and Koutougou prepare for a hippopotamus hunt on the Niger river - a big event.

At Maputo, in Mozambique, a group of workers employed by a bottle factory sing and dance every morning in the courtyard. Their singings and dancings relate the history of their migration to South Africa.

The Mannogo is a floating laboratory, designed by ethnologist Marcel Griaule to study the population of the loop of the Niger.

Maurice Godelier, the first ethnologist to have met the Baruya people of Papua New Guinea, describes his working methods and personal relationships with the Baruya.

In an Afghan village, a young Moslem girl gets ready for her wedding.

Description of the ceremony marking the beginning of tilling activity in Argungu, northern Nigeria. The genies come to the village and possess the bodies of men and women for the purpose of forecasting events in the coming year.

In Bagaji, a Hausa village in Niger, the Bawra is both village chief and priest for the rain sacrifices. Here he tells of his youth, his travels and his conception of life, and describes the tasks he has to fullfil.

On the Niger River, the island of Ayorou is home to a “singing stone”, an imposing boulder rock covered with cupules. It is used as a percussion instrument by local musicians, who have come in a canoe. After long rehearsals, the artists will play their compositions to their audience accompanied by a guitar.