Jean Rouch

An ethnographer who took a camera to West Africa and invented new ways of making films there. In Jaguar three friends set out on foot for the Gold Coast to make their fortune, improvising as they go. Chronicle of a Summer, made with the sociologist Edgar Morin, asks Parisians whether they are happy, then shows them the footage and films what they say about it. That film gave cinéma vérité its name.

Signature

• Ethnofiction: non-actors improvising versions of their own lives (I, a Negro, Jaguar).
• People on screen watching and answering their own footage (Chronicle of a Summer).
• Migration between village, colonial city and Paris (Little by Little).
• Ritual and tradition in West Africa (The Lion Hunters).