Ciné-Ethnography

Jean Rouch (2003). (ed. & trans. by Steven Feld). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

The politics of visual anthropology (Jean Rouch with Dan Georgakas, Udayan Gupta, and Judy Janda). (pp. 210-225)

[Today I watched Chronicle of a Summer again. One thing that I noticed is that Rouch and Morin were building relationship with in particular four subjects, Marceline, Marilou (depressed Italian immigrant), Landry (African student), and Angélo (a Renaut worker) throughout. In the last conversation with Marilou, Morin said "for a month..."]

Interviewers asked about how Rouch helped some Africans begin careers in film: It appeared that Rouch interacted with some of his subjects. Some of them "created a narration for the film that works at three levels. The first is a description of what you see, the second is a kind of dialogue, and the third is a statement about his own condition." (p. 219)

[This indicates that the line between filmmakers and subjects were not clearly distinguished in his approach to ethnographic filmmaking. ]

About distortion of reality: Rouch said that the camera magnifies the distortion that the presence of an inquisitor brings to the scene. But it does not matter. For him, researchers can change research practices with a camera by showing the film to its subjects and helping subjects become filmmakers, etc. instead of keeping all the information for the sake of researchers' own.

"When the survey is completed, the anthropologist goes back to the university, writes the dissertation, and possibly wins distinction in the field. What is the result for those who were surveyed? Nothing. There is no feedback from the disruption the anthropologist has created. The subjects will not read the survey. With a camera, there can be a far more fruitful result. The film can be shown to the subjects. Then they are able to discuss and have access to what has happened to them. The can have reflection even if the film is bad, for however incompetent the film may be, there will be the stimulation of the image you give of them and the chance for them to view themselves from a distance, up there on the screen. Such a distortion changes everything." (p. 220)

Chronicle of a film (Edgar Morin, 229-265)

Pointing out various reactions to the film Chronicle of a summer, Morin said it marks the failure and the success of the film: Failure, because the film did not gain the sympathy of the majoirty; success, because Rouch and himself "gave the characters the chance to speak and because, to a certain degree, we gave the public a liberty of appreciation that is unusual in cinema" (p. 259). In particular, he emphasized, the film modified the relationship between actor and spectator: "We have emerged from mystery, we have shown ourselves, present, fallible, men among others, and we have provoked the viewer to judge as a human being" (p. 259).

Morin wrote about cinema-verite:

"Cinéma-vérité: this means that we wanted to eliminate fiction and get closer to life. This means that we wanted to situate ourselves in a lineage dominated by Flaherty and Dziga Vertov. Of course this term "cinéma-vérité" is daring, pretentious; of course there is a profound truth in works of fiction as well as in myths. At the end of the film, the difficulties of truth, which had not been a problem in the beginning, became apparent to me. In other words, I thought that we would start from a basis of truth and that an even greater truth would develop. Now I realize that if we achieved anything, it was to present the problem of the truth." (p. 263)