Cinema
The Human Pyramid
La Pyramide humaine
Jean Rouch · 1961
Synopsis
At the French lycée in Abidjan, Black pupils and white pupils rub shoulders without mixing. The filmmaker asks them to act out an invented story in front of the camera: the arrival of a new pupil from Paris, who becomes friends with an African classmate and gives rise, between the two communities, to friendships, rivalries and tensions. During filming, the pupils watch the rushes and debate them, and the acting gradually blends into their own lives.
Context
The shoot, in colour and on sixteen millimetre, took place at the Abidjan lycée from the summer of 1959 to the spring of 1960, as the French colonies in Africa were gaining independence one after another; the film was released in France on 19 April 1961. Rouch carried on there the method of Chronique d'un été by showing the pupils the rushes while the work was in progress. Selected at Mannheim and Montreal in 1961 and awarded a distinction at Montevideo in 1962, it has circulated in a restored version since 2017.
Who it is for
A film of about an hour and a half, in French, halfway between documentary and fiction, performed by secondary-school pupils who are not actors.
Prizes and reception
Banned by the colonial authorities in almost all of francophone Africa; its distributor presents it as a pioneering metafiction.