Rouch in Reverse Rouch in Reverse

Rouch in Reverse (1995, 51 min. Video) UK/US/Mali) is the first film to look at European anthropology from an African perspective. Malian filmmaker and New York University professor Manthia Diawara?s provocative film examines the anthropological enterprise through the work of Jean Rouch, perhaps the most distinguished ethnographic filmmaker living today.


2/1/1997 - 2/1/1997


Rouch in Reverse (1995, 51 min. Video) UK/US/Mali) is the first film to look at European anthropology from an African perspective.

Malian filmmaker and New York University professor Manthia Diawara?s provocative film examines the anthropological enterprise through the work of Jean Rouch, perhaps the most distinguished ethnographic filmmaker living today. The resulting cross-cultural encounter is alternately wrenching, affectionate, and personal but always stimulating. In his film, Diawara pioneers what he calls ?reverse anthropology? ? where the subjects of investigation study their former investigators. Althought Rouch proves a sly and elusive subject, Diawara does manage to draw him out, providing a fascinating portrait of one of the key figures of world cinema and simultaneously creating a vigorous intertextual dialogue with past and contemporary European representations of Africa. Preceded by In the Land of the Black Magi (1947, 12 min., 16 mm, co-directed by Pierre Ponty and Jean Sauvy), a rarely screened early film by Rouch. Tonight?s program will be introduced by local documentary filmmaker Judy Hoffman, who has worked with Rouch.

Director
Manthia Diawara

Tags: Film, American, 1997