Despues de ver estos dos documentales y otros y de Jean Rouch me parece que es de los documentalistas que mas me han aportado. Les Maitres Fous es increíble, desde como introduce a esta tribu en la ciudad, su cámara se mueve perfectamente con sus intenciones y el valor de cada cuadro es preciso. Al ver a aquellos hombres comenzar su ritual no queda muy claro hacia donde nos quiere llevar Rouch, pero conforme agarra fuerza el ritual todo hace sentido e invita a una reflexión. Me gusta mucho como termina diciendo que tal vez ellos conocen rituales que aún nosotros no conocemos, no los pone como una especie rara y diferente, es gente que trabaja como cualquier otro, comen y juegan como los demás.
En cuatro décadas, Rouch rodó más de 120 films en todos los formatos, se ocupó de los indígenas, hizo retratos antropológicos o de personalidades, intentó identificarse con un africano para dar su visión de los parisienses en "Poco a poco" y participó con cineastas de la nouvelle vague en el film de episodios "París visto por...". Pero la gran mayoría de sus obras son bellos cuentos documentales referidos al Africa y a su gente. Los cinéfilos franceses sólo lo descubrieron en 1959, con "Yo, un negro", que había ganado el premio Louis Delluc. También fue galardonado en Venecia (por "Los maestros locos", 1954, sobre los ritos de posesión, y "La caza del león con arcos y flechas", 1965). Entre 1987 y 1991, además, fue presidente de la Cinemateca Francesa, y desde allí promovió las cinematografías periféricas. Su último film fue "Un sueño más fuerte que la muerte".
“Jean Rouch es el motor de todo el cine francés de los últimos diez años, aunque poca gente lo sepa. Jean-Luc ha salido de Rouch. De algún modo, Rouch es más importante que Godard en la evolución del cine francés. Godard va en una dirección que vale sólo para él, que desde mi punto de vista no es ejemplar. Mientras que todos los filmes de Rouch son ejemplares, incluso los fallidos”. (1)
Con estas palabras, Jacques Rivette afirmaba con absoluta rotundidad en el curso de una de las clásicas entrevistas-río de Cahiers la importancia del cine de Jean Rouch. Su lugar central, de guía de un cierto cine francés que se aventura en la modernidad. No es extraño que fuese Rivette -que acababa de rodar L’Amour Fou (1968), filme que se desdobla para acoger el reportaje de su propia filmación- el que hiciese esta reivindicación, ni que se produzca en un momento -1968- donde en la propia Cahiers se produce una interesante reflexión en torno a la influencia del “directo” en la ficción cinematográfica (2), que igual no estaría de más revisar ahora que el tema ha devenido un cliché de la crítica actual. Pero un giro curioso se cuela en lo que dice Rivette, ese “aunque poca gente lo sepa” que para mí no tiene tanto que ver con la minoritaria difusión de su cine, como con la actitud del propio Rouch de rechazar cualquier posición de centralidad. Una forma de hacerse a un lado para abrir sus filmes a todo tipo de desplazamientos que habita su cine al menos desde Jaguar (1954-1967) o Yo, un negro (Moi, un noir, 1958), y que es extensible a una trayectoria que sobre todo a partir de los años 70 -con excepción, quizás, de Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet (1974)- se desenvuelve silenciosa pero continuadamente en los márgenes del sistema cine.
Not much has been written about ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch's documentary The Human Pyramid (1960) in comparison to the interest aroused by Chronique D'Un Été (Chronicle of a Summer, 1961), the product of his collaboration with sociologist Edgar Morin. While most of his earlier documentaries were filmed in Africa, Chronicle of a Summer is set in Paris in the aftermath of the Algerian war and just before the explosion of social riots that came to dominate that decade. Chronicle of a Summer does not follow an established structure but is driven in an unpredictable manner by its characters and their reactions to the camera. It is arguably Rouch's best-known work, and has been widely discussed in the context of documentary filmmaking for its innovative cinematic techniques, its choice of scenario (the rough, urban streets of Paris during a significant historical moment) and for being the first film to define itself using the termcinéma-vérité.
Rouch' s documentaries are often inspired by a specific context that he wishes to capture; while in Chronicle of a Summer this is Parisian society in the aftermath of the Algerian war, in The Human Pyramid it is the issue of racism seen through the eyes of young black and white students attending a Lycée on the Ivory coast. The Human Pyramid, while possessing some of the same characteristics of Chronicle of a Summer, has a more poetic almost dreamlike atmosphere; it is also much more raw and less structured, especially considering most of it was left in the hands of the kids. For these reasons, The Human Pyramid is simultaneously more and less complicated than its successor. It is simpler because its themes are only moderately connected to society at large, as the world of these teenagers is somewhat separate to socio-historical reality, and more complex because this 'unreality' encompasses multiple layers of meaning. The Human Pyramid recalls some of Rouch's other documentaries made in West Africa, such as Les Maîtres Fous (1955) or Les Homes Qui Font La Pluie (1951), in which the element of the magical and the ritual plays a significant role. At the same time, it departs from his earlier work, and its results undoubtedly influence the approach taken by him and Morin in filming Chronicle of a Summer.
By the time of Chronicle, Rouch is more familiar with the impact of the camera on the milieu, and, rather than simply filming a designated ritual or event, is often responsible for provoking the action: “Rouch, the observer of rituals, crossed the line to become a creator of rituals in his own right”. (1) Some of the characteristics that Chronicle and Human Pyramid have in common are: Rouch exposing himself personally on camera; setting out the parameters of the 'experiment' within the first scenes; incorporating the screening of the film to the actors in the final cut; and including the 'before' and 'after' of the story. All these elements, nevertheless, are handled very differently in the two films, and Morin's influence is also to be taken into account. While Rouch's work is permeated by what Jean-André Fieschi calls “slippages of fiction”, The Human Pyramid is by far his more fantastic project. There is a sense of freshness in the film, due to the fact that it is open for anything to happen, and it is this freedom and flexibility that gives it its richness. While in Chronicle of a Summer Rouch and Morin are constantly present guiding the events, in his previous film, “once the project started, the director simply filmed it.”
Cinema verite is a term so frequently used that it is sometimes forgotten that the main instigator of both the label and the style was the ethnological filmmaker Jean Rouch... Rejecting both the idealism of Robert Flaherty and the didacticism of Joris Ivens and John Grierson, Rouch aimed for the immediacy of television, without its superficiality. He believed that the camera's intervention stimulated people to greater spontaneity, expression and truth without asking them, as in the American Direct Cinema, to act as though the camera was not there.
Ronald Bergan in the Guardian.
Jaguar
Three young men from the Savannah of Niger leave their homeland to seek wealth and adventure on the coast and in the cities of Ghana. This film is the story of their travels, their encounters along the way, their experiences in Accra and Kumasi, and, after three months, their return to their families and friends at home. The film is part documentary, part fiction, and part reflective commentary. There was no portable sound synchronized equipment in the early 1950s when Jaguar was shot. Instead, Rouch had the main characters (his friends and "accomplices") improvise a narrative while they viewed the film, which was itself improvized along the way. The resulting soundtrack consists of remembered dialogue, of joking and exclamations, of questions and explanations about the action on the screen.
Short-term, rural migration to the cities is common to much of contemporary Africa. Here we meet Lam the herdsman, Illo the fisherman and Damoure, their unsettled but literate friend. The three trek for more than a month south through Dahomey to Ghana, crossing the land of the Somba people (whose nudity shocks them), eating coconuts "more delicious than cheese," and delighting in the ocean with its waves and starfish. Eventually they part ways. Damoure and Illo go to Accra and Lam to Kumasi, where they find jobs as dockworker, foreman for a lumberman, and cattleherder for a city butcher. Having made their separate journeys, they meet again in Kumasi with a fourth friend, and set up an open-air stall, Petit a Petit, in which they hawk everything from alarm clocks to pictures of Queen Elizabeth.
Financially successful but homesick, the friends decide to leave the excitement, turmoil and bewildering complexity of the city to return home to Niger before the rains. Lam rejoins his herd, enriched with a new umbrella and a lance; Illo, "magician of the river," catches a hippo and distributes everything he has brought from his journey to his family; and Damoure admires anew the beauty of Niger women.
Yet although life in the village resumes as usual, Illo, Lam and Damoure have been "jaguars" in the city: sophisticated "keen young men" with fancy hairdos, cigarettes, sunglasses, money, and knowledge of the urban world. The film raises, but does not answer, questions about the meaning of this experience and the transformations it may entail in the lives of the returned youths. Jaguar, Thomas Beidelman has written, "does succeed in catch ing the flavor of what it must be like to pass to and from a modern city and a rural village in Africa . . . Jaguar could be an eloquent document on the process of social change."
The flavor, it might be added, is very gay. Rouch has pointed out that Jaguar does not attempt to reveal the misery and pain of the annual migration, or the boredom of village life in the dry season (eight months of the year) when young men, no longer warriors as in the past, have nothing to do. Few men, in actuality, become "jaguars" in the carefree style of Damoure, Lam, and Illo. For most, the city is a struggle. Yet jaguar is nonetheless a vivid portrayal of the ideal of migration, a fantasy imparted through the improvised actions and spirited commentary of the characters. In this film Rouch has developed a form one might call "ethnographic fantasy," with an authenticity and reality as important, although quite different, from that of Rouch's own monograph on rural migra
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/rouch.html
http://arditodocumental.kinoki.es/
http://www.der.org/films/jaguar.html
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