'The little crystal eye would not blink': Jean Rouch and the camera eyewitness. (19th December 2018)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- 'The little crystal eye would not blink': Jean Rouch and the camera eyewitness. (19th December 2018)
- Main Title:
- 'The little crystal eye would not blink': Jean Rouch and the camera eyewitness
- Authors:
- Fysh, William
- Abstract:
- Abstract: In a 1951 article series for Franc-Tireur, Jean Rouch described his fears as an ethnographic filmmaker. One must, he wrote, navigate between the detached observation of the 'dry-eyed savant' and the myopic immersion of a new 'Robinson Crusoe' bereft of his perspective-glass. If Rouch's anxiety touched on a familiar cliche of both ethnographic fieldwork and documentary filmmaking, it would nonetheless operate idiosyncratically in his work as a recurrent preoccupation with the possibilities of visual witnessing and the cooperation of human and camera eyes. In this essay I explore the genealogies of Jean Rouch's vision of témoignage, his experiments with the camera-as-witness, and the contribution of his filmmaking to a culture of visual witnessing on the cusp of what French historian Annette Wieviorka has called the 'era of the witness' in the 1960s. Focusing in particular on Moi, un noir/I, a Negro (1958) and Chronique d'un été/Chronicle of a Summer (1961), as well as Rouch's journalistic writings, television interviews and involvement with the Comité du film éthnographique in Paris, I argue that Rouch sought to develop a practice of visual witnessing in the service of a more humane cinema, one that might be adequate to the heterogeneity of its film participants. In developing such a practice, Rouch experimented with the camera's ability both to disclose and create the ambiguities and ambivalences of testimony – its simultaneously solitary and participatory voice,Abstract: In a 1951 article series for Franc-Tireur, Jean Rouch described his fears as an ethnographic filmmaker. One must, he wrote, navigate between the detached observation of the 'dry-eyed savant' and the myopic immersion of a new 'Robinson Crusoe' bereft of his perspective-glass. If Rouch's anxiety touched on a familiar cliche of both ethnographic fieldwork and documentary filmmaking, it would nonetheless operate idiosyncratically in his work as a recurrent preoccupation with the possibilities of visual witnessing and the cooperation of human and camera eyes. In this essay I explore the genealogies of Jean Rouch's vision of témoignage, his experiments with the camera-as-witness, and the contribution of his filmmaking to a culture of visual witnessing on the cusp of what French historian Annette Wieviorka has called the 'era of the witness' in the 1960s. Focusing in particular on Moi, un noir/I, a Negro (1958) and Chronique d'un été/Chronicle of a Summer (1961), as well as Rouch's journalistic writings, television interviews and involvement with the Comité du film éthnographique in Paris, I argue that Rouch sought to develop a practice of visual witnessing in the service of a more humane cinema, one that might be adequate to the heterogeneity of its film participants. In developing such a practice, Rouch experimented with the camera's ability both to disclose and create the ambiguities and ambivalences of testimony – its simultaneously solitary and participatory voice, its extrovert interiority, its improvised repetition with difference of life 'as it was'. … (more)
- Is Part Of:
- Screen. Volume 59:Number 4(2018:Winter)
- Journal:
- Screen
- Issue:
- Volume 59:Number 4(2018:Winter)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 59, Issue 4 (2018)
- Year:
- 2018
- Volume:
- 59
- Issue:
- 4
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2018-0059-0004-0000
- Page Start:
- 444
- Page End:
- 462
- Publication Date:
- 2018-12-19
- Subjects:
- Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Motion pictures and television -- Periodicals
Film criticism -- Periodicals
Identity (Philosophical concept) -- Periodicals
Critical theory -- Periodicals
Poststructuralism -- Periodicals
791.4 - Journal URLs:
- http://screen.oupjournals.org ↗
http://screen.oxfordjournals.org ↗
http://www-us.ebsco.com/online/direct.asp?JournalID=103912 ↗
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1093/screen/hjy048 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0036-9543
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 8211.754800
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 12187.xml