Bataille sur le grand fleuve

In 1954 Rouch brought Bataille sur le grand fleuve back to Ayoru, where he had actually filmed the hippopotamus hunt. They said that the film was not believable because it had music in the background a hippo hunt requires silence because noise would chase away the hippos. In reaction to their criticism, Rouch got rid of the soundtrack and corrected other errors in the film. That night Jean Rouch and the people of Ayoru gave birth to participatory cinema. Ethnography became, for a short period, a shared enterprise that was reminiscent of Robert Flahertys ethnographic techniques. (Amie Karp)