Icarus Films Has Tabbed Nov. 14 For The DVD Debut Of The Four-Disc Collection Titled Eight Films by Jean Rouch

Icarus Films has tabbed Nov. 14 for the release a four-disc DVD deluxe box set featuring 2K restorations of selected film works from the prolific French filmmaker Jean Rouch.  

The collection is titled Eight Films by Jean Rouch, and it features six of his feature-length cinéma-vérité presentations, two of his short films and, as a bonus, documentary filmmaker Laurent Védrine’s newly-prepared look at the life, influence and films of Rouch, Jean Rouch: The Adventurous Filmmaker.

Jean Rouch was by trade an anthropologist, who got the “bug” in 1941 while working on a construction project in Niger and began using film as a method to document what he saw — and in the process became a leading member of the cinéma-vérité movement and, by inference, a filmmaker with the French New Wave movement as well.   

Two of these very influential films topline this collection.   These are Moi, un Noir (1958) and Jaguar (1955), which are considered among the film treasures of France that were produced during this revolutionary period.

Other feature length entries provided by Icarus Films are La Pyramide Humaine (aka: The Human Pyramid), 1961, La Punition (aka: The Punishment) from 1962, and the 1965 documentary, La Chasse au Lion à L'arc (aka: The Lion Hunters).

The other feature-length documentary in the collection is the 1969 release of Petit à Petit (aka: Little by Little) and the two short films are Mammy Water and Les Maîtres Fous (aka: The Mad Masters), both from 1955.

Jean Rouch’s films are presented in French with English subtitles.