alr

The Human Pyramid
(La pyramide humaine)

Introduction by Jean-Michel Frodon
Directed by Jean Rouch.
France/Ivory Coast, 1961, DCP, color, 90 min.
French with English subtitles.
DCP source: Icarus Films

At the initiative of the filmmaker and ethnographer, Black and white students from a high school in Abidjan improvise scenes inspired by their relationships with one another. A review by Éric Rohmer in Cahiers du Cinéma made very clear how this experimentation with the means of cinema to highlight a reality is, above all, a work of great beauty, where beauty is a condition of truth.

PRECEDED BY

  • La mer et les jours

    Directed by Alain Kaminker and Raymond Vogel.
    France, 1958, DCP, black & white, 26 min.
    French with English subtitles.
    DCP source: Cinematheque de Bretagne

Chris Marker wrote the beautiful commentary for this short film—one with an impressive sense of live action and visual poetry—about the lives of Breton sailors and their families. One of the two directors, Alain Kaminker (Simone Signoret's brother) lost his life during the shooting of one of the most impressive scenes in the film.

ORDER TICKETS

Part of film series

Read more

Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

Chile Año Cero / Chile Year Zero

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema