1960年的夏天，社会学家埃德加·莫兰和让·鲁什对巴黎年轻人的日常生活进行调查，了解他们对幸福的理解。这部论述电影连续几个月跟踪调查的进行，也记录了主人公们的变化。调查中被采访的人最后在影片第一次放映的时候聚集在一起观看进行讨论，有人的赞同，有的人驳斥。两位导演通过这部真实电影，经历了既极具挑战又充满乐趣的体验。
"In the summer of 1960, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin investigated the everyday life of people living in Paris. ""Are you happy? How do you live?"" These are some of questions they asked young people on the street in an attempt to understand their idea of happiness.
From manual labourers, students, to a couple of office workers, the different protagonists reveal themselves in conversation, unconcerned about the presence of the camera. With no script, and no professional actors, this film sets out to frame the limits of cinematographic truth."
1961 戛纳国际电影节 国际影评人奖

1964年，正是法国电影新浪潮风起云涌的年代。六位电影大师有了个念头--要拍一拍发生在身边巴黎的故事。在很多电影找不到赞助商的时候，他们想出了个便宜的办法：先用16毫米的胶片拍，再放大到35毫米以作商业发行。这部电影就是《...眼中的巴黎》(Paris Vu Par...) 电影由六个小故事组成，充分反映了六位导演的技巧，但毕竟是短片，所以并未引起广大的关注。
Saint-German-des-Près
Jean Douchet 导演
第一个故事比较一般。一个美国少女爱上了一位英俊男子。一夜缠绵之后，男子便赶她离开。其实，这套不错的公寓是他的一个朋友借他暂住的，而他的朋友，今天就将回来。若干天后，少女在一节人体写生课上偶遇了他的朋友，于是他们一起回到那套公寓，她说出了自己的猜想。
Gare du Nord （北火车站）
Jean Rouch 导演
Jean Rouch原本是个人类学的研究者，后来开始拍摄纪录片，并逐渐转行拍电影。所以，他的电影在人类生存处境和心理刻画方面十分成功。北火车站讲述了一对夫妻，由于妻子不堪附近工地上杂音的干扰，一天早晨，两人陷入了争吵。接着的一个长镜头非常精彩，我们跟随着她走过长长的走廊，老式电梯，出门，过马路。突然，一辆汽车杀将出来，她邂逅了一个陌生人。陌生人为她的美貌所倾倒，要求她随他而去，两人走到了北火车站的天桥上，镜头从起初的尾随，一段侧面晃动的近镜头逐渐转向了正面。我们看到他绝望的脸。他们谈论爱，她相信爱在最初的诱惑和逐渐的熟悉过后必然逝去，他则给她一个新鲜的幻想，用一个完全不同的未来诱惑着她，而她坚称一切诱惑终将逝去，最初的神秘感无法永存。他开始从一数到十，说如果她不答应就跳桥自杀。一，二，三，四。。。故事的结尾是他纵身的一跃，她大声呼叫着，可为时已晚，铁路上的尸体在一个俯视的镜头里越来越渺小。
Rue Saint-Denis （圣-丹尼路）
Jean-Daniel Pollet 导演
圣-丹尼路讲述了一个洗碟子的工人里昂和一个妓女的故事。里昂西装革履，眼神犹疑，既不象一个嫖客，也不象一个洗碟子的工人。在经过一番讨价还价后，他们一起去一家廉价餐馆午餐，妓女甚至付了饭钱，而里昂或许是第一次的缘故，显得有点害怕。最后，这一时刻终于到来。屏幕上一片漆黑。只听见妓女的声音：在黑暗里做没有什么不习惯吧？
Place de l’Etoile （埃托瓦勒广场）
Eric Rohmer 导演
埃托瓦勒广场在凯旋门附近。每天早上九点二十分，鞋店老板让马克总会准时穿过这个广场。有一天，因为在地铁里被一位红衣女子踩了一脚，所以在穿过广场的时候神情有些恍惚，撞到了一个寻衅闹事的男子身上。两人在扭打之中让-马克用伞将那个男子刺伤在地。随后让-马克陷入了惊慌中，他不顾穿梭的车辆一阵狂奔，并想象着那个男子已经死于他的伞下。他买来了当天所有的报纸，寻找莫须有的新闻。。。从此以后，他上班的时候总是刻意地避开埃托瓦勒广场。
Montparnasse et Levallois
Jean-Luc Gordard 导演
戈达尔的这部短片改编自Jean-Paul Belmondo的小说《女人就是女人》 (Une femme est une femme) ,这是一个戏剧化的故事。莫尼卡是个脚踩两只船的少女，一天，她同时给两位情人伊万和罗杰寄出了情书。可是，信进了邮桶她才发现信装错了，于是她赶到了伊万那里，解释说她并不真爱罗杰，给罗杰写情书只是骗骗他而已，真正爱的还是他。谁知伊万把她赶了出来。她只好又到了罗杰那里重复了刚才的故事。结果得到了同样的下场。最后罗杰扔出了她的情书，原来信并没有装错信封。值得一提的是，据说戈达尔未向这部短片的摄影师Albert Maysles 透露任何剧情，以求电影呈现一种原本的“偶然”。
La Muette （耳塞）
Claude Charbrol 导演
耳塞也许是六部短片里最简单但最具有震撼力的一节。故事发生在一个中产阶级的家庭。由于父母整天吵架，小男孩弄来了一付耳塞，有意思的是每当小男孩戴上耳塞的时候，电影也一样陷入了一片静默之中。一天，在一次剧烈的争吵中，母亲被父亲推下楼梯，血流不止。母亲大声求救，但男孩戴着耳塞，什么也听不见，兀自出了门去。。。
虽然这六部短片都不是六位大师的顶尖之作，但它们具备了新浪潮电影的基本特点：游离于传统的拍摄规则，用手提的摄像机，街头摄影，主题以年轻人为主，不涉及严肃的政治内容等。而且，这部电影完全以巴黎为场景，可称一部巴黎的另类写真。

An African travels to Paris to learn about the construction of tall buildings, but is soon taken up with the oddities of French life.

《人类金字塔》(1961)打破记录与虚构界限，通过阿比让某混合中学非洲与法国学生在虚构环境下的即兴亲密接触探索种族身份，而拍摄电影过程也切实改变了学生演员的观念。时空概念、演员的真实与扮演的身份在片中摆脱线性关系而形成丰富层次。导演的旁白、同期对话及主角后期的自我评论构成复杂声音处理。（小易甫字幕组）

本片记录了西部非洲的乡下青年到城市打工的经历。许多尼日利亚青年离开位于内陆的家乡来到沿海国家象牙海岸打工，许多人在首都阿比让的平民区落脚。本片主人公是一位仿照美国电影明星取名爱德华·罗宾逊的年轻人，他在摄影机前讲述自己及其同伴的故事。 The film depicts an ordinary week in the lives of men and women from Niger who have migrated to Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire for work. After a short introduction by Rouch, "Edward G. Robinson"-Omarou Ganda, who like the film's other subject-collaborators plays himself under the name of a Western movie star-takes over the film's narration, recreating dialogue and providing freewheeling commentary on his experiences.

Three young men from the Savannah of Niger leave their homeland to seek wealth and adventure on the coast and in the cities of Ghana. This film is the story of their travels, their encounters along the way, their experiences in Accra and Kumasi, and, after three months, their return to their families and friends at home. The film is part documentary, part fiction, and part reflective commentary. There was no portable sound synchronized equipment in the early 1950s when Jaguar was shot. Instead, Rouch had the main characters (his friends and "accomplices") improvise a narrative while they viewed the film, which was itself improvized along the way. The resulting soundtrack consists of remembered dialogue, of joking and exclamations, of questions and explanations about the action on the screen.

Short-term, rural migration to the cities is common to much of contemporary Africa. Here we meet Lam the herdsman, Illo the fisherman and Damoure, their unsettled but literate friend. The three trek for more than a month south through Dahomey to Ghana, crossing the land of the Somba people (whose nudity shocks them), eating coconuts "more delicious than cheese," and delighting in the ocean with its waves and starfish. Eventually they part ways. Damoure and Illo go to Accra and Lam to Kumasi, where they find jobs as dockworker, foreman for a lumberman, and cattleherder for a city butcher. Having made their separate journeys, they meet again in Kumasi with a fourth friend, and set up an open-air stall, Petit a Petit, in which they hawk everything from alarm clocks to pictures of Queen Elizabeth.

Financially successful but homesick, the friends decide to leave the excitement, turmoil and bewildering complexity of the city to return home to Niger before the rains. Lam rejoins his herd, enriched with a new umbrella and a lance; Illo, "magician of the river," catches a hippo and distributes everything he has brought from his journey to his family; and Damoure admires anew the beauty of Niger women.

Yet although life in the village resumes as usual, Illo, Lam and Damoure have been "jaguars" in the city: sophisticated "keen young men" with fancy hairdos, cigarettes, sunglasses, money, and knowledge of the urban world. The film raises, but does not answer, questions about the meaning of this experience and the transformations it may entail in the lives of the returned youths. Jaguar, Thomas Beidelman has written, "does succeed in catch ing the flavor of what it must be like to pass to and from a modern city and a rural village in Africa . . . jaguar could be an eloquent document on the process of social change."

The flavor, it might be added, is very gay. Rouch has pointed out that jaguar does not attempt to reveal the misery and pain of the annual migration, or the boredom of village life in the dry season (eight months of the year) when young men, no longer warriors as in the past, have nothing to do. Few men, in actuality, become "jaguars" in the carefree style of Damoure, Lam, and Illo. For most, the city is a struggle. Yet jaguar is nonetheless a vivid portrayal of the ideal of migration, a fantasy imparted through the improvised actions and spirited commentary of the characters. In this film Rouch has developed a form one might call "ethnographic fantasy," with an authenticity and reality as important, although quite different, from that of Rouch's own monograph on rural migration to Accra.

电影讲述了无政府主义法国青年提出一个口号：“停下来思考”并以这个口号为出发点,整个巴黎不再工作城市陷入混乱，于是.....

Les Maitres Fous is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as laborers in the city's lumber yards, as stevedores at the docks, or in the mines. There were at least 30,000 practicing Hauka in Accra in 1954 when Jean Rouch was asked by a small group to film their annual ceremony During this ritual, which took place on a farm a few hours from the city, the Hauka entered trance and were possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governorgeneral, the engineer, the doctor's wife, the wicked major, the corporal of the guard.

The roots of the Hauka lie in traditional possession cults common among the Songhay and Djerma peoples of the Niger River basin. Gifted men and women may enter trance and become possessed by any of a number of strong gods, such as Dongo, god of thunder and the sky.Supplicants consult the god through the trancing medium and receive advice about their problems, cures for diseases, comfort and support, or reprimands for their wrongdoings. Like these traditional possession cults, the Hauka sect co-existed with Islam and incorporated many Islamic saints and heroes into its rituals. Most of its adherents were Muslims.

Hauka first appeared in Niger, it is thought, in the person of a former soldier who participated in the savage battles of the second German offensive of World War I in 1917 and 1918, in which West African troops were decimated despite their spectacular performance. This soldier made the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned to Niger in the 1920s. In his village, in Rouch's account, he found the people "doing a traditional dance and the soldier was possessed, very violently possessed, and while possessed he said 'I am the avant-garde of the new gods who are coming from Malia [the Red Sea]. My name is Governor Malia and I am the first of the new gods who are coming and they are the gods of strength'."

The Hauka were quickly suppressed by the French authorities in Niger, with the support of traditional chiefs and priests who feared the popularity of the new movement and its challenge to established authority. But the Hauka cult spread, even within the jail walls, and by 1935 the British administration in Ghana again attempted to suppress it and to jail the cultists. Fires broke out in response throughout Accra, and eventually there was an agreement that Hauka priests would limit their ceremonies to certain places and to Saturdays and Sundays. This was still the case in 1954 when Rouch filmed Les Maitres Fous, which was banned by the colonial government in 1955.

The Hauka movement was a phenomenon of the colonial era. After the independence of Ghana in 1957, migration was controlled and many Hauka who had settled in Accra returned to Niger. Niger itself gained independence three years later, and the Hauka began to subside and to be absorbed into the traditional religious system. Dongo, for example, the old god of thunder, is now considered the father of the Hauka. As Rouch has pointed out, "there was no more colonial power and there never was a Hauka called Kwame N'krumah." The events filmed represent the end of the Hauka development. Today the film is shown in the villages of Ghana and in the Niger Cultural Center.

The imagery in Les Maitres Fous is powerful and often disturbing: possessed men with rolling eyes and foaming at the mouth, eating a sacrificed dog (in violation of taboo), burning their bodies with naming torches. Beyond the imagery, the themes are also powerful, and have had an impact in our own culture:Jean Genet's The Blacks was modeled upon the Hauka inversion in which blacks assume the role of masters, and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade was influenced by the theatricality and invented language of Hauka possession. Yet, as Rouch reminds us in an interview in Cineaste, possession for the Hauka cultists was not theater but reality. The significance of this reality is left ambiguous in the film, although Rouch's commentary suggests that the ritual provides a psychological release which enables the Hauka to be good workers and to endure a degrading situation with dignity. The unexplored relation of the Hauka movement to their colonial experience 1-S perhaps the most intriguing issue raised by this ceremony in which the oppressed become, for a day, the possessed and the powerful.

Director Jean Rouch invites the viewer to a guided tour through the cinematographic museum Henri Langlois had built in Paris. This documentary is a unique document since the museum burnt down and cannot be visited anymore.

記錄松黑族成人禮的過程

让鲁什跟随两个巴黎“耶耶”社群的年轻姑娘，带领观众见证她们的奇遇。两个生活在巴黎16区的姑娘在家庭、朋友中间追寻幸福和爱。这部电影就如关于巴黎青少年的一篇檄文，谴责了60年代资产阶级年轻人终日无所事事的萎靡状态。 Jean Rouch describes the behavior and adventures of two young girls in the Paris music scene of the 1960s (la société <yéyé>). He shows the day-to-day life of two young girls in the 16th arrondissement as they move between their family and friends in search of happiness and love. Presented as an essay on Parisian adolescent girls, this film is a critique of the carelessness and banality of 60s bourgeois youth.

The story follows three poultry sellers on a trip across the bush, attempting to deliver a load of chickens to a market in Niamey.

从1957年到1964年，让鲁什跟随在Yatakala地区的Gaos猎人进行了多次尝试，试图狩猎老狮子，技能和魔法紧密联系在一起: 造弓和制箭、准备毒药、追逐、杀害仪式。这个绰号叫“美国人”的老狮子一直躲避着陷阱…
From 1957 to 1964, Jean Rouch has followed Gaos Hunter in Yatakala, trying several time to hunt the old lion. The skill and magic connect closely together: making bow and arrow; prepare poison; chasing; killing ritual. The old lion whose nickname was American has tried so hard to avoid the trap...

在一艘行驶在北欧Botnie冰川峡湾的破冰船上，三位导演将三部电影合而为一。Givre号船（35分钟） ：影片片头，导演Jean Rouch就用摄像机无声地记录着破冰船及其水手日日夜夜的工作，让我们隐约感受到船舶在海洋中无止尽的飘荡。影片在广阔的冰川和薄雾中拍摄完成，显现出一种现实主义诗歌氛围。

Advertising film for Volkswagen cars aimed at African market.