In partnership with the American University of Paris, University of Kent, Paris and the University of London Institute in Paris, please join us in our first of a series with Jenny Chamarette, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London.
Parallel histories: ethnographies of looking in Left-Bank documentary
In 1965, the famous Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Semb猫ne held a conversation with Jean Rouch, the influential ethnographic filmmaker. While applauding Rouch鈥檚 experimental films such as Moi, un noir (1958), he criticised Rouch鈥檚 more traditionally ethnographic films in the following terms:
芦 On y montre, on y campe une r茅alit茅 mais sans en voir l鈥櫭﹙olution. Ce que je leur reproche, comme je le reproche aux africanistes, c鈥檈st de nous regarder comme des insectes鈥� 禄 (Cervoni 1996 : 106).
What does it mean to look at someone like an insect? What would the ethics be of this looking, and what kind of temporality would it reveal? These questions are the prompts for this work-in-progress paper, which investigates modes of looking, and the parallel (and uncomfortable) evolutions of cinema, in particular museum documentary and ethnographic film, and colonialism.聽 This paper investigates three interconnected films about African art and objects, ethnography and museums:聽 Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, 1953), Moi, un noir (Jean Rouch, 1958), and what has been described as Africa鈥檚 first feature film, La Noire de鈥� (Ousmane Semb猫ne, 1966). Each of these films engage directly and indirectly with the remains of French and European (post-)colonial power in Africa.
In my work-in-progress, I want to discuss the points of connection between these films鈥� interests in the objects, archives and collections of museums in France and Europe, and orientalising forms of acquisitive collection. These critical engagements display on the one hand the remit of the political and intellectual concerns of French documentary filmmakers (Rouch, Resnais, Marker), and on the other, the legitimate cautioning by Semb猫ne about the ethical impact of these films鈥� ways of looking. By revealing the aesthetic limitations within these films, such a critique also indicates the political and ethical occlusions made by white French filmmakers about black African worlds. By looking particularly at the invocations of objects as part of the 鈥榚thnographic screen鈥� of these films, I want to examine how these occlusions reveal important connections and tensions between the histories of cinema, the museum, and the painful history of colonial power.
Jenny Chamarette
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London