Headline Dec.24/ ''' *MASTERS* OF MEMORIES '''

''' *MASTERS* OF MEMORIES '''

THE MOVIE WAS BANNED in Britain and and caused such a sensation in France, where it has been credited-

With inspiring Jean Genet's incendiary play : ''The Blacks''. This research post, and honor thereof, is a ''Long-overdue'' homage for this master documentary maker.

A youthful devotee of surrealism turned anthropologist turned documentary filmmaker, Rouch  {1917-2004} is best known for directing, along with- Edgar Morin, the founding work of cinema verie, ''Chronicle of a Summer'''  [1961].

But he made an equal if not if not greater contribution to French film with his ethnofictions  -a blend of documentary and imaginative drama  -that he shot .during the early 1950s with a hand-held 16-millimeter camera in colonial West Africa.   

As influential as these proved to be, not least on the French New Wave directors, they have been difficult to view the in the United States.

The Icarus set makes available restored versions of Rouch's three major ethnofictions, ''Moi, un Noir'' { I, a Black. Man}, from 1958, ''The Lion Hunters''  [1965]  and Jaguar [1967].

There are also two early shorts, ''Mammy Water'' [1955]  and  ''The Mad Masters'' [1956.  

The most notorious of Rouch's early work was ''The Mad Masters.'' Shot in the British colony that would become Ghana  after its independence,  the film showed members of a cult in the throes of spiritual possession.

In part as a means of mocking their colonial overlords. The movie was banned in Britain and caused a sensation in France, where it has been credited with inspiring Jean Genet's incendiary play 'The Blacks'.  

Abandoning sensationalism, Rouch next made ''Moi, un Noir'' in Abidjan, the  capital of Ivory Coast, then a French colony. His method was collaborative. 

The movie features a group of young migrants from Niger who play themselves as well as the movie stars with whom they identify.

The use of the lead actor's voice-over narration to comment on the action, along with the spectacle of young people playfully acting in a movie [and thus further documenting their situation], was revelatory for French film makers, like-

Jean-Luc Godard, who called ''Moi, un Noir'' the greatest French film since the Liberation,''

[One need only screen ''Moi, un Noir'' together with ''Brathless'' to gauge the impact on Godard's film practice.] 

Both  ''Jaguar''  and  ''The Lion Hunters''  took years to make and found their story lines in the course of their production and editing ''Jaguar,'' which both documented and staged the adventures of three migrant workers travelling from Niger to Ghana's coast, was-

Filmed largely in 1954 and finished in 1967, but was not publicly shown until 1971. Again Rouch recorded his actors spontaneous comments as they watched themselves on film -a device also used in ''Chronicle of a Summer''.   

An existential quest that evidently required seven years to complete. ''The Lion Hunters'' is framed as a tale told to a group of children in an African village.

It's a legend although Rouch's sense of mythology is closer to Claude Levi Strauss's structural anthropology than to the folklorist approach of the Brothers Grimm:

For all the movie's primal imagery, ''The Lion Hunters'' is ultimately a study of its subjects' non-European logical thinking.

The Icarus set also includes two less familiar collaborative documentaries depicting the relations between Europeans and post-colonial Africans, ''The Human Pyramid'' [1961] and  ''Little by Little''  [1969], as well as ''The Punishment'' [1962], in which one of the-

European women from ''The Human Pyramid'' wanders through Paris, approached by a succession of men.

Shot in Ivory Coast on the cusp of its independence, ''The Human Pyramid'' is largely an improvised group psychodrama in which African and  European students try, with varying success, to break through the informal segregation that separates them.

''Little by Little,''  originally over four hours in length, but here 96 minutes, was conceived as a sequel to ''Jaguar,'' in which actors from the earlier film make an ethnographic expedition to Paris.

[Jacques Rivette considers the movie the catalyst for his 13 hour opus, ''Out 1: Noli Me Tangere'']     

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Buoyant & Brave'''

Good Night and God Bless

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