Chronicle of a Summer (Criterion Collection)

Few films can claim to be as influential to the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF a SUMMER. 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 cinima veriti 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 imagery to an African student. CHRONICLE OF a SUMMER'S penetrative approach gives US a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.