Il Cinema del Contatto

by Jean Rouch, Raul Grisolia (editor)

French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, a founder of the cinema verite movement, explores the intersection between culture studies and cinema in "The Cinema of Contact."

157 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

He is considered to be one of the founders of cinéma-vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker for over sixty years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of shared anthropology. Influenced by his discovery of surrealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style of ethnofiction.

He was also hailed by the French New Wave as one of theirs. His seminal film Me a Black (Moi, un noir) pioneered the technique of jump cut popularized by Jean-Luc Godard. Godard said of Rouch in the Cahiers du Cinéma (Notebooks on Cinema) n°94 April 1959, "In charge of research for the Musée de l'Homme (French, "Museum of Man") Is there a better definition for a filmmaker?"

Along his career, Rouch was no stranger to controversy. He would often repeat, "Glory to he who brings dispute."