Jean Rouch, Filmmaker, Anthropologist, Engineer, and White African

Abstract

In Jean Rouch's meeting with Manoel de Oliveira, the latter situated him and his cinema as more African than European, and Jocelyne Rouch identified him with the title of the film Moi, un Noir (I, a Negro; Rouch, 1958) — that is him. Rouch is also an engineer at Ponts et Chaussées. No wonder his cinema reflects the poetry of iron and steel, as does Manoel de Oliveira's. Rouch's bridges and paths are also connecting people, cultures and societies. The relationship of the real as imagined in his films — fascination with authentic Dogon rites and possession phenomena and modern anthropology focused on displaced people, migrants living in big cities, and urban life — is thus remarkable. This text seeks to address four dimensions of Jean Rouch's path: situating him in the context of ethnographic film, revisiting the archives of Chronique d'un Été (Chronicle of a Summer; Rouch & Morin, 1960) 50 years after it was produced, Rouch's meeting with the Dogon and the "poetry of iron and steel" shared with Manoel de Oliveira, referring to his dimension as an engineer, filmmaker and anthropologist. Other equally important dimensions were left out, for they do not fit into this reflection.