Film Details

Jean Rouch’s first great feature was a major influence on the French New Wave. (It introduced jump cuts and employed non-professional “actors.”) Set in the Ivory Coast, the movie focuses on two Nigerian immigrants nicknamed Edward G. Robinson and Eddie Constantine who try to find work as dockworkers while living in a squalid section of Abidjan. Moi, un Noir will be preceded at 7:30 by Rouch’s groundbreaking short film The Mad Masters (Les maîtres fou, France, 1955), a record of a Hauka “trance” ritual in the former Gold Coast (now Ghana) in which initiates are “possessed” by the spirits of British colonials, whom they mock. This controversial work is one of the seminal ethnographic movies, inspiring Werner Herzog, among others. Cleveland revival premiere. Subtitles. DCP. Total 103 min.