Review by lchadbou-326-26592

Whatever the interest today in the lives of several menial workers in the late 1950s Ivory Coast or the background described of their city Abidjan, the abiding significance of director Rouch,s project in this and several other documentaries about Africa is the way he offered his subjects a full participation in the way they would be filmed.He was not your typical white European ethnographer observing and then telling us, often via condescending narration, what he thinks he sees.An approach,as demonstrated by non fiction works made before this, that can lead to misunderstanding and distortion.Instead Rouch asked the actors to tell him what they wanted him to shoot, allowed them to improvise, and followed them unobtrusively with just one camera and no additional crew.He also showed them the rushes and asked their advice on how to edit them.This was a remarkable step forward in the freedom with which documentaries could be made,if the filmmakers of the future cared enough to absorb the lesson.