The Human Pyramid + The Punishment

Since 1978, Icarus Films has been a leading distributor in North America of independent documentary, narrative, and experimental films from around the world and now represents a collection of over 1,000 titles. We value meeting the diverse needs of film lovers, educators, activists, and service providers, as well as challenging audiences, and programmers, with original creative films. Icarus Films is proud to be active in traditional and new media, and to work with new talent as well as old masters.

A leading figure of the cinéma vérité movement and inspiration for the French New Wave, Jean Rouch’s documentaries of the 1960s revolutionized ethnographic filmmaking. In The Human Pyramid, a work of "groundbreaking metafiction" (The New Yorker), Rouch meets with a group of white colonial French students and their Black African classmates (all non-actors) in a lycée on the Ivory Coast. Inspired by the arrival of a new white classmate (Nadine Ballot), Rouch encourages the students to enact an improvised drama about the realities of interracial relationships, transforming their attitudes towards each other in the process. Included as a bonus film, Rouch’s The Punishment sees Nadine Ballot return as an aimless young student wandering the streets of Paris in a vérité portrait of youth culture in transition.

directed by: Jean Rouch
starring: Nadine Ballot
1961, 1962 / 157 min (combined) / 1.33:1 / French DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual Mono

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• Additional Film - The Punishment
• Booklet with an essay about Rouch
• English subtitles