A Talk by Laure Astourian

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Laure Astourian will present  The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana University Press, June 2024). The Ethnographic Optic explores the significant ties between colonial ethnography and innovative works of 1960s French cinema. Astourian probes the emergence of a self-aware urban French ethnography in both fictional and documentary films during the era of decolonization and offers fresh readings of canonical films including Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch, 1958), La jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), and Muriel ou le Temps d’un retour (Alain Resnais, 1963).

Laure Astourian is Associate Professor of French at Bentley University. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of French at Columbia University in 2016. Astourian was a 2020 Fulbright Research Scholar at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and a 2023 resident fellow at the Mucem and Institute for Advanced Study at Aix-Marseille University (Iméra). She is the author of The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2024).