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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Our totemic ancestors and crazed masters |
Author: | Rouch, J. |
Year: | 1988 |
Periodical: | Senri Ethnological Studies |
Issue: | 24 |
Pages: | 225-238 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Subsaharan Africa |
Subjects: | anthropology cinema |
Abstract: | In discussing a small selection of his own films, the author outlines some major developments in ethnographic film since the Second World War, showing how what had previously been something of an art form of the avant-garde now became professionalized. The example of his first film, 'Au pays des mages noirs' (Niger), illustrates the restrictions that commercial distribution places on ethnographic films. It also illustrates the author's idea of anthropologie partagée, a sharing of life and film experience between the anthropologist and the people with whom he is working. The author has made over 50 films showing African possession cults, of which the best known, 'Les maîtres fous', was at first banned by British colonial authorities and shunned by African audiences. More recently the author has collaborated with Germaine Dieterlen on a series of eight films on the Sigui, an infrequent ritual of world renewal performed by the Dogon (Mali) every sixty years. Filmogr. |