BUILDING BRIDGES

Building Bridges is the first title to fully explore the work and legacy of French documentary maker Jean Rouch. A figure as comfortable in front of the camera as behind it, Rouch created some of the most enduring sociological films about French and francophone African culture, and his playful documentaries make him the spiritual ancestor of filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore, and a precursor to the world of Big Brother and reality TV. Based on a major international conference, this study contains over twenty new essays from a global cast of filmmakers, film critics, academics and actors, including a number of Rouch’s African-based collaborators, and discusses his massive contribution to ethnographic filmmaking with films such as Les Maitres Fous (1955), Le Pyramide Humaine (1961) and Chronique d’un été (1961). This collection is set to become a benchmark study of one of the most influential documentary presences of the last century.


November 2007
288 pages

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Joram ten Brink is a filmmaker and Reader in Film at the University of Westminster.

'This book, product of a three day retrospective and conference organised by the editor is more thoughtful than much earlier writing. Some myths are dispelled.
Rouch had a way of making his own creative biography sound more pioneering than it actually was. He spent his life evading intellectual capture, and the butterfly net for surrealists was no better at catching him for a pinning down than any other net. He was consistently inconsistent. [...] The book provides plenty of material towards such a project.'
– Vertigo

‘Even before his death Rouch had become more symbol than substance; this excellent volume seeks to and succeeds in changing that. With contributions from those who have seriously explored his ethnography to those who have worked with him in the field, this is undoubtedly a definitive work which will provide material and generate debate for a generation of scholars to come.’
– Marcus Banks, University of Oxford

'This book is both a wonderful homage to Rouch and a treasure-house of thoughtful essays on his work. It fills a critical gap between the Rouch legend and the films themselves.'
– David MacDougall, Australian National University

'This collection is an invaluable resource that proves why Rouch is so crucial to understanding documentary now; there are few contemporary problems of ethics or aesthetics that rouch had not encountered ... These essays are a brilliant addition to documentary studies in the English-speaking world.'
– Jon Dovey, Bristol University

‘This collection is a gift to the world ... A volume of moving memories and critical appreciations of one of the great figures in twentieth-century cinema and anthropology which will inspire young filmmakers, artists and anthropologists to uncover their pasts and imagine their futures.’
– Paul Stoller, West Chester University of Pennsylvania