
The Ethnographic Optic
Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema
- 264 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Ethnographic Optic
Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema
About this book
The Ethnographic Optic traces the surprising role of ethnography in French cinema in the 1960s and examines its place in several New Wave fictions and cinéma vérité documentaries during the final years of the French colonial empire.
Focusing on prominent French filmmakers Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais, author Laure Astourian elucidates their striking pivot from centering their work on distant lands to scrutinizing their own French urban culture. As awareness of the ramifications of the shrinking empire grew within metropolitan France, these filmmakers turned inward what their similarly white, urban, bourgeois predecessors had long turned outward toward the colonies: the ethnographic gaze.
Featuring some of the most canonical and best-loved films of the French tradition, such as Moi, un Noir, La jetée, and Muriel, this is an essential book for readers interested in national identity and cinema.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Translations
- Introduction
- 1. The Ethnographer’s Alibi: The Limits of Shared Narration in Jean Rouch’s Moi, un Noir
- 2. “Moi, un Blanc”: Jean Rouch’s “Parisian Period,” from La pyramide humaine to Petit à Petit
- 3. Missed Connection: Paris in Chris Marker’s Le joli mai and La jetée
- 4. Seeing Double: Algeria and France in Alain Resnais’s Muriel
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author