Chronicle of a Summer
Few films can claim to be as influential to the course of cinema history as this one. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker–anthropologist Jean Rouch (Moi, un noir) and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Morin would term cinéma verité is a brilliantly conceived and realized sociopolitical diagnosis of the early sixties in France. By simply interviewing a group of Paris residents in the summer of 1960—beginning with the provocative and eternal question “Are you happy?” and expanding to political issues, including the ongoing Algerian War—Rouch and Morin reveal the hopes and dreams of a wide array of people, from artists to factory workers, from an Italian émigré to an African student. Chronicle of a Summer’s penetrative approach gives us a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.
- New high-definition digital transfer of the Cineteca di Bologna restoration of the film
- Un été + 50 (2011), a seventy-three-minute documentary featuring outtakes and new interviews with codirector Edgar Morin and some of the film’s subjects
- Archival interviews with codirector Jean Rouch and Marceline Loridan, one of the film’s subjects
- New interview with anthropology professor Faye Ginsburg, organizer of several Rouch retrospectives
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Sam Di Iorio
- Actors: Marceline Loridan, Mary Lou Parolini
- Directors: Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin
- Format: Black & White, NTSC
- Language: French
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 1
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Studio: Criterion Collection
- DVD Release Date: February 26, 2013
- Run Time: 91 minutes
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