Loizos- Jean Rouch

Loizos discussed the film experiments by Jean Rouch, which were innovative in the field of documentaries and ethnographic films. Rouch challenged the idea of documentation-realism by using improvisation and fantasy as methods to explore issues in a culture and people’s lives. Him and his colleagues collaborated with the subjects of the films, and saw themselves as agents of the documentaries. The camera and filmmaker were not seen as passive recording devices, but as an active interrogation of the world. Rouch believed that what happened on screen often would not have happened without the actions of the filmmaker. Moi, Un Noir (1957) is a film by Rouch that was innovative because of the “use of projective improvisation to convey something fundamental about real lives, combined with the use of the subject’s voice” (Loizos 50). The subjects were talking about their everyday lives, but would also include who they would like to be and how they would want to live. La Pyramide Humaine (1958-59) dealt with racial tensions in students of Africa by using a narrative, fiction plot line. There was no way to film the issue through reality because the political and social climate would force the students to put forth acceptable ‘official views.’ By making the story up, a message was revealed and the players in the film were all affected by it. Jean Rouch challenged the accepted cultural distinctions between real and fake.