Friends, Fools, Family Berit Madsen and Anne Mette

Friends, Fools, Family is a film that a festival called ‘Cinéma Vérité’ was naturally entitled to screen. Co-directed by Danish Berit Madsen and Anne Mette, it tells a simple story about a unique Euro-African collaboration in a specific cinematographic field: ethno-fiction. It also tells a lot about the father of this genre – and leading figure of so-called ‘Cinema vérité’: Jean Rouch. French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch spent most of his life in Africa, where he eventually died at the age of 87, whilst driving through the desert. Friends, Fools, Family shows an unknown aspect of Rouch’s work: the human and working relationships he built in Niger.

Through the words of his African collaborators Tallou Damouré, Moussa and Lam, the audience reconstitutes the Rouch way of doing anthropology: creating the best environment for people to express and build their own images and history themselves. This was done by helping them in developing specific skills in filmmaking. Consequently, the four companions of Rouch have become sound engineer, cameraman, screenwriter and actor beside their work as village doctor for one and shepherd for another. Rouch’s award-winning ethno-films were born from the spirit, ideas and points of view of the native African people.

Friends, Fools, Family is an unpretentious documentary and not especially remarkable in terms of cinematography. Nevertheless it is effective as a memory valve, taking us back to Rouch’s cinema and to those who he considered as his masters: Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, representatives of unforgettable pages of cinematic history.

Mirtha Sozzi