Jean Rouch

Abstract

who had some engagement with academic anthropology but who then developed their careers largely outside academic life. Rouch was unique in that, having studied anthropology to the doctoral level, he then held an academic post throughout his career and made film-making central to his professional identity. This was something that no leading anthropologist had done before, nor, for that matter, have many been able to do since, either in France or in the English-speaking world, at least not to anything like the same degree. Rouch was a person of great energy and imagination, but his ability to dedicate so much of his time to film-making was made possible by a particular set of institutional circumstances. Early on in his career, in 1948, when he was 30 and still a doctoral student, he was appointed to a position at the principal academic research institute in France, the CNRS. By this time, he was already closely associated with the Musée de l'Homme, which, in 1952, became the seat of the newly created Comité du film ethnographique. Rouch was appointed its general secretary, a position that he would retain for the rest of his life: the Comité would become the principal vehicle through which he would conduct his professional affairs, including the production of most of his films. Apart from a brief interlude in 1951-53, when he was temporarily expelled for failing to complete his doctoral thesis 8.1 Jean Rouch in 1954 on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), aged 36. He is using the Bell & Howell Filmo 70 that he bought in the Paris Flea Market in 1946.