Synopsis
Jean Rouch made a report on the problems facing young people both black and white in a mixed class of the lycée of Abidjan. He proposed to the pupils to play a psychodrama the theme of which he gave them.
The story is built during the filming, the pupils invent their actions and their dialogues as they wish. Spontaneous improvisation being the only rule. “Little matters the story, whether it is plausible or copied, little matters the camera or the microphone, little matters the film maker, little does it matter whether during these weeks a film is born or whether this film does not exist. What happened around the camera is much more important. Because something did happen. Through these cardboard classrooms,these poetic juvenile loves, these pretended catastrophes. Ten boys and girls, ten Aficans and Europeans, have learnt to love each other, have learned to fall out with each other, to make it up, to know each other. What several years in commun classes had not succeeded in doing do, a simple film and its daily improvisation managed to do. For all these young Africans and Europeans the word racism no longer has the least meaning.” Said Jean Rouch.