Friends, Fools, Family: Rouch's Collaborators in Niger

Jean Rouch is known to many worldwide as a French anthropologist and innovative filmmaker. Much of his work is linked to the birth of cinema verite. However, Rouch's fifty-year involvement with a particular group of people in Niger shines a more personal light on his work - one of friendship and collaboration. Together with this group, Rouch made numerous ethnographic films and developed their own cinematographic style. These films have been termed 'ethno-fictions. In 2003, two Danish anthropologists and filmmakers went to Niger to make a film with Rouch's friends. Their film was going to be an exploration of the methods of the group. It became a story about how this unique collaboration came to change the lives of both the filmmaker and his friends.