Edgar Morin & Jean Rouch: chronicle of a summer

in the context of the exhibition ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks, the curators what, how & for whom/whw are presenting the following screening program:

chronicle of a summer by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch 1961, French with English subtitles, 90’

Chronicle of a summer is a collaboration between the influential filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch and the sociologist Edgar Morin. This was the film that introduced “cinéma vérité” as a strategy for documenting reality. From a simple beginning where the filmmakers set out to ask people in the street ‘are you happy?’, the film evolves into a complex portrait of a society under strain. Shot as a self-reflexive documentary, chronicle of a summer centres on a series of interviews and discussions with different members of the working class in Paris. their intimate dialogues discuss both personal issues of work, love, and depression as well as France’s war in Algeria, the situation in the Congo, and memories of the holocaust.