16 Facts About Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.

Jean Rouch is considered one of the founders of cinema verite in France.

Jean Rouch began his long association with Nigerien subjects in 1941, when he arrived in Niamey as a French colonial hydrology engineer to supervise a construction project in Niger.

Jean Rouch became interested in Zarma and Songhai ethnology, filming Songhai rituals and ceremonies.

Jean Rouch sent his work to his teacher Marcel Griaule, who encouraged him to continue it.

Shortly afterward, Jean Rouch returned to France to participate in the Resistance.

In 1950, Jean Rouch started to use Zika as the central character of his films, registering the traditions, culture, and ecology of the people of the Niger River valley.

Jean Rouch spent four months travelling with Sorko fishermen in a traditional pirogue.

Jean Rouch made his first films in Niger: Au pays des mages noirs, Initiation a la danse des possedes and Les magicians de Wanzarbe, all of which documented Songhai spirit possession rituals and the Zarma and Sorko peoples living along the Niger River.

Jean Rouch is generally considered the father of Nigerien cinema.

In 1957 Jean Rouch directed Moi, un noir in Cote d'Ivoire with the young Nigerien filmmaker Oumarou Ganda, who had recently returned from French military service in Indochina.

Jean Rouch is considered a pioneer of Nouvelle Vague and visual anthropology, and the father of ethnofiction.

Jean Rouch's films are mostly cinema verite, a term Edgar Morin used in a 1960 France-Observateur article referring to the Kino-Pravda newsreels of Dziga Vertov.

In 1996, following the election of Nelson Mandela, Jean Rouch visited the Centre for Rhetoric Studies at the University of Cape Town at Philippe-Joseph Salazar's invitation.

Jean Rouch gave two lectures on his work and shot some footage in the Black townships with his assistant Rita Sherman.

Jean Rouch died in a car accident in February 2004,16 kilometres from Birni-N'Konni, Niger.