Jean Rouch's Jaguar
Friday, February 19, 2016
Atlanta Contemporary | 7:00 pm
$8 admission / $5 for Contemporary supporters with ID
A fundamental influence on the French New Wave cinema and on anthropological filmmaking worldwide, Jean Rouch's remarkable body of work is little-known in the United States. Unsparing in its depiction of rituals and everyday life, acutely aware of the different levels of truth available to the camera, yet never losing a sense of humor, his cinema always creates its own context of serious play.
It is this sense of playfulness that characterizes Jaguar, a deliberate "ethnofiction" that is one of cinema's most subversive ethnographic films. In the 1950s, Rouch and his Nigerian friends made a car trip from the countryside of Niger to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and back, filming along the way. Years later, they returned to the footage and added their own ironic spoken commentary over the top, reconstructing their own journey on the level of myth while poking fun at European assumptions about Africa and anthropological "subjects." Filmed against the backdrop of the independence movement in Ghana, Jaguar uniquely combines politics, fiction, comedy, and anthropology during a decisive political moment.
Jaguar (Jean Rouch, 1950s/1967), 88 minutes. French with English subtitles.
Atlanta Contemporary
535 Means Street NW
Atlanta, GA, 30318
404.688.1970
atlantacontemporary.org
Jean Rouch's Jaguar is a Film Love event. The Film Love series provides access to great but rarely seen films, especially important works unavailable on consumer video. Programs are curated and introduced by Andy Ditzler, and feature lively discussion. Through public screenings and events, Film Love preserves the communal viewing experience, provides space for the discussion of film as art, and explores alternative forms of moving image projection and viewing.