Jean Rouch

French anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch who died at the age of 86, left behind a legacy of 120 films, the majority shot in Africa. His work mixed anthropology with cinema, in what he would call Ethno-fiction, which meant it was highly revolutionary in the 1950s. He wanted to blur the antagonism between subject and observer, and therefore between fiction and documentary. Three key aspects of his work were improvisation, dialogue as a manifestation of the intercultural and fiction as an expressive mode between the real and the imaginary. He had a great influence on the directors of the Nouvelle Vague and of Cinema Verité.