Bataille sur le grand fleuve [Battle on the Great River] (1952) – dir. Jean Rouch *

33 mins., colour, sound – French voice-over commentary

Production :  IFAN/ CNC/ Musée de l’Homme.

Sources : CNRS Videothèque no.555; Jean Rouch(DVD collection), Éditions Montparnasse, 2005

Film content  – This film offers a more extended account of the hippopotamus hunting shown in Rouch’s earlier film  Au pays des mages noirs , and was shot in glorious Kodachrome colour stock with his colleague Roger Rosfelder recording the sound on a Sgubbi field tape recorder. It  appears to have been the first film that Rouch showed back successfully to the subjects, an event which resulted in ‘feed-back’ screenings becoming a central feature of his methodology thereafter.

Texts : Henley 2009, Henley 2017

© 2018 Paul Henley