I, a Negro

Jean Rouch's 1958 film announced his break with traditional ethnography. It follows an ordinary week in the lives of young men who have migrated from Niger to Treichville, a poor quarter of Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire, for work. But the film does not observe them from outside: Oumarou Ganda gives himself the name Edward G. Robinson, takes over the narration, reconstructs the dialogue in voice afterwards and comments on his own life. Rouch called this method shared ethnography and ethnofiction, with the performer becoming a mediator by playing a member of his own social group. What Ganda says about labouring in the ports and about daily poverty in the quarter is among the most direct records of postcolonial Africa from that time. The film won the Prix Louis Delluc in 1958 and directly influenced the French New Wave. Ganda later became a director himself. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of documentary, ethnographic cinema and the roots of African film. Who it's not for: anyone wanting orderly narrative, or bothered by the era's limits in sound and image quality.