Visual Anthropology

ISSN: 0894-9468 (Print) 1545-5920 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvan20

The ethnographic surrealism of Jean Rouch

Jeanette DeBouzek
To cite this article: Jeanette DeBouzek (1989) The ethnographic surrealism of Jean Rouch,
Visual Anthropology, 2:3-4, 301-315, DOI: 10.1080/08949468.1989.9966515
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.1989.9966515

Published online: 17 May 2010.

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Visual Anthropology, Vol. 2, pp. 301-315

1989
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The "Ethnographic Surrealism"

of Jean Rouch

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Jeanette DeBouzek
Using James Clifford's notion of "ethnographic surrealism," this paper focuses on the
"surrealist" features of the film work of Jean Rouch. First, drawing extensively from an
interview held with Rouch in May 1988, I outline the influence that the "ethnographic
surrealism" of the 1930s had on Rouch. I then go on to discuss "surrealism" in Rouch's
use of the camera, choice of subject matter, techniques of narration, and relationship to
his subject. I conclude by demonstrating that Rouch's current work at the Cinmathque
Franaise and the Comit du Film Ethnographique offer excellent examples of his
ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and thus extend the original spirit of "ethnographic surrealism" into the present.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND SURREALISM IN PARIS

Charting the historical overlap between and mutual influence of the nascent
discipline of anthropology and the surrealist movement in France between
the two world wars, historian of anthropology James Clifford has coined the
hybrid term "ethnographic surrealism" [1981]. For Clifford, the term not
only signifies the literal interaction of artists and ethnographers in the Paris
oF the 1930s, but provides a descriptive term for a new way of thinking, a
new way of seeing, and a common search for meaning in a fragmented
modern world. French social scientists were beginning to get out of their
chairs and into the field, to experience first-hand the life of the people they
studied. At the Trocadro Museum, a growing collection of artifacts from
Africa and Oceania represented a modest beginning of a more thorough
investigation into the scientific study of other cultures. At the same time,
artists no longer content to create an art that spoke only to and of their
immediate milieu viewed the objects at the Trocadro with fascination and
respect, recognizing in them an aesthetic spirit that ignored time and place,
a spirit that fluidly crossed cultural borders. Africa, once merely a source of
colonialist exploitation, became a source of knowledge for anthropologists
and a source of inspiration for artists, both searching for an alternative to the
narrow rationalism of the West.
is a graduate student at New York University. During the spring of 1988, she
lived in Paris for four months, conducting research for her dissertation, Envisioning the Other: Film
as a Method of Documenting Trance Performances. She is currently working on a proposal for a
film about the Santa Fe Fiesta. Her mailing address is P.O. Box 16467, Santa Fe, NM 87506-6467, USA.
JEANETTE DEBOUZEK

301

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302 /. DeBouzek

The first major field work mission in French ethnographic history was a
logical outcome of the intimate relationship between artists and anthropologists that had developed in Paris by the early thirties. Under the direction of
Marcel Griaule, the Mission Dakar-Djibouti headed for Africa after a spectacular fund-raising event that drew patrons from the upper echelons of the
Parisian art scene. The expedition was unique in the sense that it included
among its members the surrealist writer Michel Leiriswho was later to
publish an evocative and highly critical account of the trip, L'Afrique fantme
[1966]. The venture was organized with an eye towards exploiting "the
fashionable enthusiasm for things exotic" [Clifford 1981:547] that was part of
the art ngre wave that had hit the Paris scene in the twenties, and the
eventual receptacle for the "booty" collected was to be the Muse de
l'Homme.
Although Jean Rouch was only thirteen when the Mission Dakar-Djibouti
departed for Africa in 1930, he was to feel the impact even then, an impact
which was to shape his future career as an ethnographer and as a filmmaker.
He would eventually study anthropology under Griaule, who would later
encourage him to use film to record the spectacular masked dances of the
Dogon as well as to collaborate with Germaine Dieterlen, one of Griaule's
early assistants, on at least one film about the Dogon, Ambara Dama [1974].
Rouch was to integrate into his film work an artistic sensibility that had been
fostered by the "ethnographic surrealism" that was so much a part of the
Paris of his youth.
Reminiscing about the connections between the world of art and the
world of anthropology that made up the "surrealist ethnography" of the
time, Rouch dearly remembers his place in the midst of it all. He claims that
it was there, at that moment of blurred genres, that the groundwork for
visual anthropology was laid.
Everything was connected for young people, as we were then. We discovered at the same
time surrealist art, poets like Eluard, Breton, the painting of Salvador Dali, Tanguy, Max
Ernst, Magritte, the music of Erik Satie and Stravinsky, the jazz of Duke Ellington and Louis
Armstrong.
What you have to understand was that at this time, in the thirties, "anthropology" per se
did not exist. All the people who were in some way "artists" or "anthropologists," well, they
were philosophers, they were thinkers, they were writers, they were poets, they were
architects, they were filmmakers, they were members of only one very wide group. It was, in
fact, Vavant-garde. They were exchanging their experiments, and Paris was a kind of strange
workshop where there was a sharing of all these experiments.1

An example of this "sharing of experiments" was the journal Documents,

published in the late twenties. Founded by jazz musician Georges-Henri
Rivirewho, with Paul Rivet, was to eventually co-organize the Muse de
l'Hommeand edited by dissident surrealist Georges Bataille, Documents
included articles by Griaule, Leiris, and other members of the soon-to-be
launched Mission Dakar-Djibouti as well as features on modern art,

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Jean Roach's "Ethnographie Surrealism" 303

musicincluding jazzand popular culture. However, it was the more
polished but equally eclectic Minotaure, appearing shortly after the demise
of Documents, that was to devote an entire issue to the ground-breaking
Mission Dakar-Djibouti, complete with lavish photographs of Dogon
masked dancers. Consistent with publisher Albert Skira's philosophy that
ethnography could act as an "activating agent for a modern aesthetic"
[Holman 1987:61], Minotaure included reports on the "para-artistic" manifestations of the era such as ethnographic expeditions which, in breaking
down the hierarchical systems of rational thinking through the presentation of
a different aesthetic, were easily subsumed under the mentalit of surrealism.
Although Clifford claims that the publication o Minotaure and the concurrent formation of the Muse de l'Homme signaled the growing distance
between modern art and ethnography as distinct fields of inquiry [Clifford
1981:553], it is Minotaure that Rouch cites as an important personal revelation
and as a significant "sign of the times."
I remember quite well when I was a young lad to discover in the same library two covers of
Mirj}taure. One was the cover of the issue about the Mission Dakar-Djibouti, with a reproduction of a Dogon painting in red, black, and white.2 The other one was by Giorgio de Chirico. I
was very impressed by that. And I will remember all of my life the photography in that one
issueI think it was by Griauleof the Dama masks dancing on the terrace. It was
something very strange.
And all the issues of Minotaure were carrying this same strange Stimmung. It was the same
that was in the paintings of de Chirico, the same as you find in the first paintings of Salvador
Dali, in Max Ernst, in the collages. It was this way to "jump/ to "imagine." And in the middle
of that there was this strange ritual that nobody could understand.

The ongoing presence of this fertile interaction between the art and
ethnographic communities in Paris continues today, albeit in a more retrospective form. A few blocks from the Muse de l'Homme, the Muse d'Art
Moderne featured an extensive exhibition o Minotaure in the Spring of 1988,
concurrent with another show across town documenting the evolution of
Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, one of the earliest, and perhaps the most
succinct examples of a modern artist's stimulation by African art. And, as
evidenced by the attendance at an event that same season hosted by Rouch
at the Cinmathque Franaise, there seem to be in Paris as many artists,
dancers, writers, and poets interested in ethnographic film as there are
academicians.
JEAN ROUCH AND "ETHNOGRAPHIC SURREALISM"

Despite Rouch's avowed influence by the "ethnographic surrealism" of the

thirties, he himself did not begin to produce work until over a decade later.
His first film, Au pays des mages noirs, shot on the Niger River in 1946-47,
came about as the result of his return to Africa following a stint there as a
civil engineer in 1941. Can Rouch's work therefore properly be called "sur-

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304 J. DeBouzek
realist?" Is Rouch indeed carrying on the French tradition of "ethnographic
surrealism?"
As Clifford points out in his articleand it is what makes his contribution
much more useful as a theoretical frameworkthe concept of "ethnographic
surrealism" is not necessarily limited to a particular historical time and
place, that is, Paris of the 1930s. "Ethnographic surrealism" outlines the
features of a particular state of mind, a mind, to paraphrase Clifford,
fascinated with the juxtaposition of diverse cultural codes, ideological
identities, and exotic and ordinary objects [1981:550]. This juxtaposition is
capable of revealing another level of "reality," the existence of which serves
to put into question accepted modes of perception and thought. This other
realityor "surreality"can best be understood on the level of the unconscious mind rather than through any logical thought processes. Consequently, in its wildcat arbitrariness, the juxtaposition that Clifford considers
a key feature of "ethnographic surrealism" also represents a force capable of
blurring disciplinary boundaries. In each case, as will be shown, Rouch's
work and Ufe can be seen as an exampleand a unique one at thatof
"ethnographic surrealism."
Ethnography as "Science Fiction"

First of all, Rouch's ethnographic work, by his own admission, is not

properly "objective" in the positivist sense that Western rational science
seeks to define ethnography and as it has so often been defined in the
United States and Britain. Rather, he prefers the term "science fiction," a
term which acknowledges the constructed nature of "truth" in ethnographic
representations, revels in the constant play of the "real" and the "imaginary,"
and is a means by which the distinction between an "objective" science and
a "subjective" art can be dissolved. For Rouch, the human sciences are
"terribly subjective" [Yakir 1978:24]; his solution is not to try to become
"scientifically" more objective, but rather to acknowledge the subjectivity of
his position and use it to his advantage, to create a cinema that is simultaneously "truth" and "fiction." Ideally, this would be a cinema that, in
proper surrealist style, brings into focus the relativity of Western concepts
of "reality" and "truth."
In practice as well as theory, Rouch blends "truth" and "fiction" in his
work, mixing cultural codes and shattering expectations. His "ethnofiction" films, such as Jaguar [1954-65] and Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet [1974],
which appear to "document" life in post-colonial West Africa, are ethnographic fantasies built around historical and social realities, complete with a
cast of "fictional" characters. Even when Rouch is unquestionably dealing
with "real" people, the element of fiction is present. Discussing his "cinportrait" of Margaret Mead, made in 1977 shortly before her death, Rouch
says:

Jean Ranch's "Ethnographie Surrealism"

305

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For me, documentary and fiction are similar . . . (Mead) is what we call in anthropology a
"totamic ancestor," so we're already in the imaginary. I know that with the camera, when we
hare a dialogue, it'll be a fiction film on the world, the U.S., what we think, our dreams, etc.
. . . We won't know in advance what will be the end. The conclusion will come somehow
[Quoted in Yakir 1978:24].

One of Rouch's acknowledged pres spirituels was Russian documentarist

Dziga Vertov. Although, with his heavy emphasis on quick cuts and double
exposurescreating a filmic "collage" that would certainly please the
surrealistsVertov's editing style was radically different from Rouch's own
tendency toward the long take and single-shot scene, his influence on
Rouch's sense of the "real" was profound. For Rouch, as for Vertov, the
camera becomes a living thing with the ability to penetrate into another
reality. It is in this manner, Rouch states, that cinema is exactly like surrealist
painting: "l'utilisation des procds de reproduction les plus rels, les plus
photographiques, mais au service de l'irrel, de la mise en prsence d'lments irrationnels. . . . La carte postale au service de l'imaginaire" [Rouch
1957:19].
The Unconscious Mind as Guide in Filmmaking Practice

This "postcard at the service of the imaginary," the snapshot that captures
the "unreal" that Rouch's cinema was to become relies not only on his
penchant for mixing truth and fiction, but, to a great extent, on techniques
of the unconscious mind similar to those used by the surrealists to stimulate
their creativity. In fact, Rouch himself often compares his method of filmmaking with the investigations of the unconscious by the surrealist poets
and painters, discovering in their activities the state he often finds himself in
when he films, a state he was to later refer to as his "cin-transe" [Rouch
1978:7]. In an interview held in 1978, Rouch discussed the famous scene
from Chronique d'un t [1960], when Marceline walks through the deserted
landscape of les Halles, remembering her past. "She was the only one to
hear her own words. . . . Nobody looked through the view-finder: we
didn't know what image we were getting. It was surrealistic because we did
it unconsciously . . ." [Quoted in Yakir 1978:26].
Rouch often speaks of being "possessed" when he is filming, of entering
into his "cine-trance." What is it that Rouch is possessed by? According to
him, he is possessed by film itself. The process of filmmaking is an act of
belief, the belief that his films are as much a product of his unconscious
"filmmaker's" mind as they are the careful documentaries of an "ethnographer." For example, in the short but revolutionary film Tourou et Bitii [1971],
Rouch uses the narration to explain the circumstances of the filmit was
shot in one continuous take of a ten-minute magazineand to wonder
aloud if it was his own act of filminghis cine-trancethat he believes
precipitated the possession trance of the dancers.

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306 J. DeBouzek
To listen to the narration of Tourou et Bitti is to experience radical shifts in
time and place, as well as shifts in the consciousness of the filmmaker. First
we are walking with Rouch into the compound where the dances are to take
place as he recalls the difficulties that have arisen with this particular ritual.
As he explores the compound, first pointing out the pen where the goats are
kept and then approaching the drummers, he shifts into the present tense of
the event being filmed, bringing us closer to that moment and place. As the
possession of the dancers takes hold, he comments, in retrospect, on his
decision to keep filming. Then, as the possession becomes fullblown, he
takes on the voices of the spirits themselves, moving into a "performance"
mode of address that mirrors their position. As the event winds down,
Rouch backs out of the compound, once again shifting his narration, moving
out of the "present" of the event into the "present" of commenting on the
eventin effect, back to where he began the film. Finally, he reflects into the
future, on what the eventual outcome might be for the film.
As in so many of Rouch's other films, both dancer and filmmaker are the
subjects of Tourou et Bitti. In Rouch's work, the investigation of the unconscious is not limited to the unconscious of the possessed dancer, but is
directed towards the unconscious of the "possessed" filmmaker as well. In
discussing the process of making the film, Rouch acknowledges the ambiguous nature of the relationship between the person who films and those
who are filmed, a relationship that brings into question the nature of an
absolute "truth" seen from a single point of view.
. . . I will show how the filmmaker-observer, while recording these phenomena, both
unconsdously modifies them and is himself changed by them; then how, when he returns
and plays back the images, a strange dialogue takes place in which the film's "truth" rejoins
its mythic representation. Finally, this demonstration of the active, involuntary role played by
the observer will lead me to attempt to get closer to the situation of the ethnographer in his
own field [Rouch 1978:2].

The "active, involuntary role" that Rouch mentions appears at first glance
to be a contradiction in terms, much like the world of the Dogon magicians,
where an outsider's concepts of "reality" and "truth" are constantly in
question. Approached from a rational perspective, it makes no "sense." But
considered in the same light as the activities of the surrealists as a way of
allowing the unconscious to act as a guiding force in creative work, it
becomes a meaningful description of Rouch's own technique of cine-trance,
when the camera becomes an extension of the filmmaker.
Ambiguityand the unknownrather than posing a problem to the
"surrealist ethnographer," is actively pursued; it is through ambiguity that
another reality can reveal itself. As Michel Leiris once noted in reference to
the seemingly random logic of the journal Documents, it mirrored a world
that was "a wild area into which one ventures without any kind of map or
passport" [Leiris 1966:256]. For Rouch, the camera is his passport, but
whether it is the passport to fantasy or to truth, he can't say for sure

Jean Rouch's "Ethnographie Surrealism" 307

[Marshall and Adams 1978:1018]. He is certain that it is "the camera (that)
allows me to see the gods."
Filming Possession

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Rcmch's desire to see the gods in the West African rituals that he so often
films resembles the desire of the surrealists to rediscover myth and magic in
modern life. His particular focus on rituals of possession and his ability to
film them so well is intimately related to his interest in the workings of the
unconscious mind. Recalling his first experience in Africa with possession
phenomena and his "initiation" into filming trance, Rouch explains:
I think it was (the surrealist poets) Andr Breton and Paul Eluard who once wrote something
making a comparison between the journey of a shaman and the journey of a poet who, when
he starts to write, doesn't know where he is going. He is in another state of being, dans un
autre tat, which is very close to the tat of possession. And they tried to provoke that state in
writing, in their "automatic writing" [l'criture automatique).
When I saw my first possession ritual, I was confronted with something I could not
understand. For the first time in my life, I saw a dialogue between human beings and spirits.
And I thought of the "possession" experiment of Breton and Eluard. And from the very
beginning, I said, "There's only one way to study that, it's to make a film."

Indeed, perhaps the most obvious realization of the "surreal" in Rouch's

work is in his choice of subject matter. Whether he is in the field in Africa or
at home in Paris, the exploration of the unconscious mind forms a significant
part of his area of study. This exploration is particularly developed in
Rouch's films on possession rituals. Although a number of other ethnographic filmmakers have documented similar phenomena, Rouch is still the
acknowledged master of the genre, and his ideas articulating the altered
state he finds himself in as he films continue to be a fascinating and
unparalleled investigation into the personne of the filmmaker.
Here his debt to the surrealistsand to the "ethnographic surrealism" of
the thirtiesis profound. The surrealists, while interested in the overlooked minutiae of everyday life, were also fascinated by the bizarre,
seeking out examples of hallucinatory behavior in modern life. Their experiments with "automatic writing" were designed to put them into a kind of
"trance" to better free the movement of the unconscious. Their studies of the
language and behavior of the insane were similarly inspired by their desire
to understand the mysteries of the unconscious. Their desire to find alternatives to rational thinking led the surrealists to extol the "exotic" rituals that
were being studied in the field by the Mission Daker-Djibouti. Rouch's
interest in possession trance is the manifestation of a broader "surrealist"
interest in the world of the imagination, a world that was being explored by
the poetsand the ethnographersof the avant-garde of his youth.
I am fascinated by the way (the possessed) are travelling the "mirrors of passageways" all the
time, going somewhere else, which is also the key to poetry. I was so lucky to be a young man

308 J. DeBouzek
in Paris during that fantastic period when the people in literature, in architecture, in
painting, in film, and in poetry were inventing the world of imagination.
I make films about possession because I don't understand. That's the mystery for me. And
it's a wonderful mystery. And I think that only film can show that.

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"Possession" in Narration
To make a film about something as evanescent and mysterious as possession
certainly requires an unconventional approach on the part of the filmmaker,
perhaps one which is less "logical" and more "poetic." Rouch's "poetry" in
filming possession rituals can be most easily observed on the level of
narration, where he is free to explore the relationship between possession
and the unconscious mind. He readily admits that his reliance on his
unconscious to guide him is a significant factor in the creation of his postproduction voice-over narrations. In fact, Rouch's technique of narrating his
films can be considered an "experiment" very close to that of Breton and
Eluard's l'criture automatique. Totally improvised, "according to chance,
following my unconscious," as Rouch likes to say, his narrations are recorded in real time as the film is being screened before him. There they take
on the "surreal" aspect of a cacaphony of mixed voices, a collage of direct
observations, "scientific" information, scholarly interpretations, reflexive
reflections, reportage, and poetic translations of bits of dialogue.
Les Matres Fous, one of the more well-known and controversial films by
Rouch, was the first film he was to narrate in this manner, drawing not only
on his firsthand knowledge of the ritual, but on his unconscious to structure
the material in process. Shot in 1953-54, Les Matres Fous documents the
rituals of the cult of the spirits of the Hauka, who, possessing their adherents, act out many of the political "rituals" of the French colonialists who
were in power in Ghana at the time. Although Rouch had tried to translate
directly the dialogue of the Haukaa glossolaliac melange of broken
French and Englishhe realized that the task was an impossible one. After
working extensively with one of the members of the cult on an interpretation
of the events and the recorded speech, he decided to set his notes aside,
doing the final voice-over without a written script. According to him, that
first narration was part of his own "possession" by film, part of his personal
cine-trance.
Perhaps the most striking featureand one of the most "surreal"of
Rouch's technique of narration is the filmmaker himself adopting the voices
of the possessed dancers and the gods that possess them. As he narrates in
post-production, he seems to be "possessed" by the same gods that possess
the dancers. The voices of the spirits "speak" through Rouch as they speak
through the mouths of the possessed dancers. This shift of consciousness is
signaled in the narration by a distinct performance mode, with a unique
rhythmic pace and repetitive structure that echoes the ritualized speech he

Jean Rouch's "Ethnographie Surrealism" 309

is translating, rendering his performance "poetic." No longer merely reporting: on the event, Rouch enters into it, becoming, for a moment, "possessed."
In the film Ambara Dama [1974], for example, when the gods appear to the
people in the form of the masked dancers, Rouch greets each one in a highly
poetic manner, in the manner that they would ritually be greeted by the
people:
Salut Canada! Salut masque de la bois . . .
VoL oiseau Balabout! Vol, vol oiseau Balabout!

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Earlier in the film, the same repetition figures into Rouch's explanation of the
parade of masks along the ridge of the cliffs:
Tous les hommes, tous les mtiers,
tous les trangers, tous les ges,
tous les fonctions . . .
est Sgurent comme les masques des bois . . .

Although Rouch is obviously chanting the exact words of those he is

filming when he repeats the ritual greetings, the way he chants, the mode of
performance he engages ina mode which, as just shown above, often
carries over into the rest of the narrationcan again be compared to the
surrealist poet's flow of "automatic writing."3 In discussing his intuitive
approach to narrating the speech of those who are possessed, Rouch cites
surrealist Robert Desnos as an example of a poet who does not write but
"speaks" through his unconscious. Desnos' trance-like "performances"
were capable of creating a dream-like world where meaning could only be
revealed to those willing to take, as Rouch puts it, the "journey to the
country of imagination."
The Exploration of the African Unconscious

Regarding the public reception of Les Matres Fous, it is interesting to note

that it was artists such as writer Jean Genet and director Peter Brook, rather
than professional anthropologists, who seemed to understand and accept
the film for what it was, thereby momentarily dissolving the boundaries
between art and anthropology, an action that had earlier been the goal of
"ethnographic surrealism."
Possession as a performance mode, a mode that director Peter Brook,
influenced by Les tatres Fous, was to adopt in his staging of Marat/Sade,
figures prominently into th work of Jean Rouchas demonstrated above
b5^his use of poetic devices in his narrationsalthough he claims that he
has never allowed himself to become "authentically" possessed, preferring
instead to "follow" the spirits, to "believe in the beliefs" of the people he
studies.

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320 /. DeBouzek

However, in Les Matres Fous, Rouch uncharacteristically applies a Freudian interpretation to the Hauka ritual, suggesting that it is a way to release
deep frustrations, reconciling the migrant workers to their oppression by
the French colonialist government. Although Rouch now expresses dissatisfaction with this interpretation, he sees it as an inevitable "sign of the
times," a way of explaining an otherwise horrific event to a Western audience. Yet his choice of interpretive style in this particular case may have been
another way of exploring his fascination with and finding meaning in the
mysterious workings of the unconscious mind. The surrealists, sharing this
fascination, were interested not only in an ethnography that explored different ways of thinking and behaving, but in modern psychiatry and psychoanalytic methods as well, as evidenced by the presence in the pages of
Minotaure of articles such as "The Problem of Style and the Psychiatric
Conception of the Paranoiac Forms of Experience" by doctor of psychiatry,
Jacques Lacan. Surrealism has, in fact, often been referred to as "the application of Freudianism to art," [Cardinal and Short 1970:9], and l'criture
automatique was originally a psychiatric technique used to discover latent
meaning in the thought processes of the insane.
Les Matres Fous not only captures Rouch's "surrealistic" state of being
while filming and narrating, the very event that the film documents provides an example of the radical juxtaposition of discrete "voices," highlighting issues defined by Clifford as crucial to the concerns of the ethnographic
surrealist who "delights in cultural impurities and disturbing syncretisms"
[1981:549]. The gods that possess the members of the cult are not ordinary
gods, but functionaries of the colonialist adminstration. The "governor^
speaks through the foaming mouth of one of the possessed menand
eventually through Rouch; another is dressed as the governor's domineering
wife. At one point in the ritual, Rouch cuts to a parade of colonialist soldiers,
their feathered helmets symbolically related to the breaking of chickens'
eggs on the head of one of the ritual carvings. It is "disturbing syncretisms"
such as these that form the backbone of the activities of the Hauka cult.
Rouch's interest in a less disturbing, but equally "surrealistic" syncretic
culture was to find its outlet in his later collaborations with his African
friends Damour Zika and Lam. These "ethno-fictions" refiguredas had
the films documenting more traditional African ritualsthe "exotic" cultures of the African into systems of thought on a par with the West. This
refiguration had been the goal of the surrealists as well, who looked to socalled "primitive" cultures for inspiration and enlightenment in a modern
world whose meaning had been annihilated by the war. For the surrealist
group, the function of the avant-garde, whether artists or ethnographers,
was to introduce new systems of thought into their world, to offer new
alternatives, thereby challenging the real and the rational, which was, in
effect, to challenge the dominance of the West.
Discussing this ideological component of the avant-garde of Paris of the

Jean Rouch's "Ethnographie Surrealism" 311

thirties as it was realized in the ethnographic work of the Mission DakarDjibouti, Jean Jamin writes:

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The "native". . .was no longer perceived as a savage or a primitive. He became an object and
a subject of knowledge. By collecting his material productions, from the humblest to the
most sophisticated; by gathering and then analysing his symbolic productions, from the
most visible to the most esoteric, the Mission (in the literal and figurative sense) brought the
"native" onto metropolitan territory and reserved a place for him in those privileged places of
Western cultural identity: museums and libraries. It located him no longer outside (as a
savage) nor at the beginning (as a primitive) of Western civilization, but alongside it (Jamin
1987:84].

Rouch has attempted to realize this ideological goal in his filmmaking

practice and theory. For example, his unique experiment in turning the
camera around, encouraging the "natives" of Africa to look at the "natives"
of Europe, resulted in the film Petit Petit [1969], which playfully documents
the continuing adventures of Damour and Lam, the "co-stars" o Jaguar, as
they discover Paris. But it is in his films on the Dogon that his deep respect
for a culture that is not his own is most apparent. Discussing his ongoing
fascination with African performance, Rouch reports:
Last time I was in Niamey and I saw yenendi, which is the ritual in which you ask Dongo, the
thunder god, for rain, I had the same enthusiasm, the same passion for these kinds of things
as 1 have always had. For me, these rituals are more beautiful than all the opera that you could
dream of, more beautiful than all the ballet. From a theatrical point of view, it's perfection. But
it's more than that. This ritual was a dance with a meaning in which you can see the spirits
speak with human beings, directly. And that's really very impressive. And if I make films, it's
because I think that maybe one day I will find one of the keys to understanding the mystery in
these rituals.

Although all of the issues discussed abovethe use of the camera as a

tool to reveal a deeper "truth," the choice of subject matter, the structuring
of narration, the positioning of the filmmaker in relation to the subjectare
relevant to all ethnographic filmmakingraising the question, is ethnographic filmmaking, by nature, "surrealist?"Rouch's unique contribution
is his high level of reflexivity about the process, a reflexivity that is built into
all his films. It is this reflexivity that allows Rouch to cross disciplinary
boundaries with ease, mixing poetry and science, art and ethnography.
Much attention has been paid to the fact that Rouch's documentary
Chronique d'un tmade in 1960 about the "tribe" known as the Parisians
had an enormous impact on French "art" filmmakers of the era such as JeanLuc Godard, signalling the beginning of the movement in film known as
cinma-vrit. This was a movement that every film buff knows, but that
remains to be fully recognized by the ethnographic film community, as
evidenced by the number of conventional, non-reflexive films that are
produced each year. In the famous final scene of Chronique, Rouch and codirector Edgar Morin are seen walking down the African Hall in the Muse
de l'Homme, which now houses part of the collection of the Mission Dakar

322 /. DeBouzek

Djiboutian appropriate choice!discussing their "experiment." No more

eloquent metaphor could be found to capture the memory of the spirit of the
avant-garde of Paris of the thirties when there were no boundaries between
"art" and "science," between "us" and "them," in that magical era from
which this film, as all films of Jean Rouch, was born.

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ART AND SCIENCE IN LIFE AND WORK

The final scene in Chronique provides a bridge to discuss one last aspect of
Rouch's "ethnographic surrealism," the way his work, indeed his life, has
been a means of straddling both art and science, both ethnography proper
and avant-garde filmmaking. His influence on and involvement with the
French New Wave of the sixties recalls the "sharing of experiments" that
made Paris of the thirties an era of fertile interaction. His collaborations with
and support of young African filmmakers, whether documenting the "exotics" of Paris in Petit Petit [1969] or exploring social relations in Bac ou
Manage [1987], grew out of Rouch's dissatisfaction with the limits of conventional ethnographic cinema and his desire to unify fiction and non-fiction
filmmaking in the service of a "humanistic science."
Rouch explains that all film has a place in this "science," if "science"
represents the way we learn about and understand our world. In proper
"surrealist" style, Rouch presents everything from recent documentaries
about China to French comedies of the silent era in his seminars at the
Cinmathque Franaise.
What I want to do at the cinmathque is to screen films which move the audience, as I was
moved when I saw Nanook for the first time. And then, perhaps, they will discover that there
are different ways of behaving, of thinking, and these differences are, in fact, the richesse of
our world.
And I think these films can act as a kind of catalyst to say to the audience, "Be careful. There
are many other cultures. They are different than ours, but they are to be respected. " They are
our patrimoine, our patrimony, the patrimony of humanity.
And I think this work could be done not only with documentary films, but with fiction
films as well. When Margaret Mead wrote a handbook for American soldiers who were to be
sent to France during the war, what did she look at? Les Enfants du Paradisl It means there is
something behind all these things that will offer some explanations about other cultures.
That is one of the keys. I think we know more about Japanese culture because we saw
Rashomon.

Rouch's work at the cinmathque is one way that he is able to bring

together art and science, to introduce a multiplicity of other cultures to a
Western audience, as did the ethnographers of the thirties who returned
from Africa with their "booty," a collection of objects and ideas that stimulated the artists of the time. It is here, in fact, at the cinmathquewhich
had been started by Henri Langlois at the invitation of Paul Rivet, the
director of the Muse de l'Hommethat Rouch traces the first meeting of
anthropology and cinema. In the same interdisciplinary spirit of "ethno-

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Jean Rouch's "Ethnographie Surrealism" 313

graphie surrealism," Rouch's current position as director of the cinmathque coexists with his position as Secretary-General of the Comit du
Film Ethnographique, housed in the Muse de l'Homme.
As a "performer" in the worlds of art and science, Rouch's performance as
"surrealist ethnographer" can be seen not only in his approach to his
ethnographic subjectwhether African magicians and possessed dancers
or French socialists and autoworkersbut in his manner of presenting films
to the public as well. In an allnight event that closed the 1988 Bilan des Films
Ethnographiques, Rouch was host for the screening of films as diverse as his
early Initiation la danse des possds [1948-49], an excerpt from his later
"ethno-fiction" Dionysos [1984], one on black jazz dance by American Mura
Dehn, The Spirit Moves [1950], and even a snippet of Carmen Jones (1954) by
Otto Preminger featuring Pearl Bailey singing "Beat Out That Rhythm on
the Drum." This event, titled "Cin-Danse, Cin-Transe," and co-organized
by the Cinmathque de la Danse and the Cinmathque Franaise, also
included a number of entr'actes, such as a performance by Jena Manda Ko, a
"pop" singer from Zaire, thus recalling the fad for l'art ngre which was so
fashionable in Paris during the twenties and thirties. Perhaps most "surrealist" of all was the intervention choreographique, in which a live dancer performed in front of the screen while an excerpt from Rouch's Yenendi de
Yantalla [1969] was screened. The audience was an eclectic blend of artists,
filmmakers, and anthropologists, who seemed to be enjoying the "spectacle" with equal enthusiasm.
Although Rouch laments the passing of that "magical" era of his youth
when, for the first timeand perhaps the lastart and science were working together towards the same goals, "ethnographic surrealism," in the
broadest sense of the term, continues to force us to question whatever
dichotomies we may be tempted to make between disciplines as we attempt
to develop the field of visual anthropology. It may also cause us to question
deeply our own sense of the "real" as it is used to recordwhether in words
or on filmthe world around us. As James Clifford notes:
Ethnography combined with surrealism can no longer be seen as the empirical, descriptive
dimension of anthropology, a general science of the human. Nor is it the interpretation of
cultures, for the planet cannot be seen as divided into distinct, textualized ways of life.
Ethnography cut with surrealism emerges as the theory and practice of juxtaposition. It
studies, and is part of, the invention and interruption of meaningful wholes in works of
cultural import-export [1981:563].

It is "surrealist ethnographers" such as Jean Rouch who can act as our

guides in this adventure of "juxtapositioning," helping us to realize the
futility of erecting artificial boundaries, whether they are between fields of
study or different cultures, or between "fiction" and "non-fiction," the "real"
and the "surreal." For it is in work such as his that the advantages can clearly
be seen of dissolving such boundaries in service to a greater understanding
of the human spirit.

324 /. DeBouzek
NOTES

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1. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are taken from an interview I had with Rouch in
Paris in May 1988. Other uncited material is taken from his lectures at the Cinmathque
Franaise and discussions held at the Seventh Bilan des Films Ethnographiques, 14-18
March. Support for my research in Paris was made possible in part by the Chinard
Scholarship Foundation (L'Institut de Franais de Washington). Thanks also to Franoise
Foucault and Brise Ahounou at the Comit du Film Ethnographique for their patience and
assistance during my stay in Paris, and especially to Faye Ginsburg for encouraging me to go.
2. The cover is actually a reproduction of a painting based on an African design by the artist,
Gilbert Roux.
3. Unfortunately, this paralinguistic/poetic sense of Rouch's narration is virtually lost in
many of the English language versions of his films.

REFERENCES
Cardinal, Roger and Robert Stuart Short
1970 Surrealism: Permanent Revelation. London: Studio Vista/Dutton.
Clifford, James
1981 On Ethnographic Surrealism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 23:539-564.
(Reprinted with revisions in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.)
Jamin, Jean
1987 On the Human Condition of Minotaure. Focus on Minotaure: The Animal-Headed
Review. Exhibition catalogue. Pp. 79-88. Geneva: Muse d'Art et d'Histoire.
Holman, Valerie
1987 The Artist in His Element: Minotaure's Coverage of the Visual Arts. Focus on Minotaure: The Animal-Headed Review. Exhibition catalogue. Pp. 43-78. Geneva: Muse
d'Art et d'Histoire.
Leiris, Michel
1966 De Bataille l'impossible l'impossible Documents. In Brises. Pp. 256-266. Paris:
Mercure de France.
1968 L'Afrique fantme. Paris: Gallimard. (Originally published 1934.)
Marshall, John and John W. Adams
1978 Jean Rouch Talks About His Films. American Anthropologist 80:1005-1022.
Rouch, Jean
1967 Comment. Cahiers du Cinma 195:18-19.
1978 On the Vicissitudes of the Self: The Possessed Dancer, the Magician, the Sorcerer,
the Filmmaker, and the Ethnographer. Steve Feld and Shari Robertson, translators.
Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 5(1):2-8.
Yakir, Dan
1978 Cin-transe: The Vision of Jean Rouch. Film Library Quarterly 2(2):22-27.

FILMOGRAPHY
Rouch, Jean
1946-47 Au pays des mages noirs. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1949 Initiation la danse des possds. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1953-54 Les Matres Fous. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources.

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315

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1954-65 Jaguar. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources.

1960 Chronique d'un t. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1969 Petit Petit. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1969 Yenendi de Yantalla. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique.
1971 Tourou et Bitti. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1974 Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique.
1977 Cin-portrait de Margaret Mead. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique.
1984 Dionysos. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
1987 Bac ou Mariage. Paris: Comit du Film Ethnographique.
Rouch, Jean and Germaine Dieterlen
1974 Ambara Dama. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique.