The first film to look at European anthropology from an African perspective. Malian filmmaker and New York University professor, Manthia Diawara's provocative new film examines the anthropological enterprise through the work of Jean Rouch, perhaps the most distinguished ethnographic filmmaker living today and one who made several early influential documentaries about West Africa. Clips from Rouch's works, including "Petit a Petit", "Les Maitres Fous", "Chronique d'Été" and "Moi, un Noir (Treichville)" are included.

West African filmmaker, eminent scholar of Pan-African film and culture, and NYU professor Manthia Diawara returns to Paris and reverses the ethnographic gaze to focus on Jean Rouch, innovative and controversial ethnographer. Diawara visualizes the textbook Paris of his youth in colonized West Africa, the Paris Rouch knows and loves, Parisian museums holding trophies of the French conquest of Africa, and also private spaces maintained by post-colonial Africans in Paris. Shot by Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust, Crooklyn), Diawara's film sees through Rouchian ethnography's "primitive" images to reveal new voices-simultaneously modern, French and African.

Manthia Diawara, UK/USA/Mali, 1995; 52 minutes

DIRECTOR:
Manthia Diawara

1st CAMERA: Arthur Jaffa
2nd CAMERA: Khalid Frikha

SOUND: Bernard Pichon
EDITOR USA: Sikay Tang
EDITOR UK: Justine Krish

ONLINE EDITOR: James Marshall

MUSIC: Yacine Kouyaté

PRODUCTION MANAGER: Caroline Allan
Production manager: Rina Sherman

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Julina Henriques COMMISSIONING

EDITOR: Sabine Bubeck

PRODUCERS:
Manthia Diawara
Parminder Vir; FORMATION FILMS production
for ZDF/ARTE, 1995

FORMAT : DigiBeta