Loizos III

I just finished my midterm paper on how technology has affected visual anthropology in the past century, so [especially] found Loizo’s reflections on Rouch to be very interesting. He not only was one of the pioneers of sync-sound, but was a skilled, unique filmmaker and cinematographer himself. I’m interested to see firsthand what Loizos is talking about when he says Rouch’s camera movements are “restless” and give the feeling of “motion sickness.” The latter criticism aside, this fluid, spirit-like motion that is being described seems like such a wonderful way to record such significant events in a culture. I also thought it was interesting that Rouch sought to negate the “problems” of the objective camera, to the camera as a provoking, explorative tool.

I found the discussions of the films rather difficult to understand without being familiar with them, but did find the term “cinema-truth” introduced in Chronique d’un ete to be an interesting word. I get frustrated in class, as it seems every time someone has an opinion, the next speaker always points out the flaws in terms of bias, that the statement contains. It’s hard to do given 1: every movie contains bias; and 2: we’re only watching movies. This term is a good safety net, or at least something new for me to think about.