Moi, Un Noir (Jean Rouch)
Jean Rouch
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1h 13m
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1958 • 70 minutes
Winner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc in 1958, MOI, UN NOIR marked Jean Rouch's break with traditional ethnography, and his embrace of the collaborative and improvisatory strategies he called "shared ethnography" and "ethnofiction."
The film depicts an ordinary week in the lives of men and women from Niger who have migrated to Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire for work. The film captures both the sorrows and the occasional joys of their experience in all of its psychological complexity. A landmark of documentary cinema, Rouch's stylistic innovations here exerted a profound influence on the French New Wave, and his collaborative process helped bolster the national cinemas of West Africa.
"MOI, UN NOIR is, in effect, the most daring of films and the humblest."—Jean-Luc Godard, filmmaker
"Seminal."—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Up Next in Jean Rouch
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The Punishment
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1962 • 64 minutes
An aimless young woman is sent home from school with nothing to do. Drifting through the streets of Paris, she comes across a variety of people.
"Extraordinary and extraordinarily rare movie about public misogyny."—Richard Brody, The New ...
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Six in Paris: Gare du Nord
Directed by Jean Rouch • Drama • 1965 • 17 minutes
A young woman has a life-changing encounter with a man she happens to meet on the street. Richard Brody of The New Yorker considers this "one of the greatest short films ever."
