About Tristes Tropiques

A documentary directed by Jean-Pierre Beaurenaut, Jorge Bodanzky, Patrick Menget.

Synopsis

“I con­sider myself a trav­eller, an arche­ol­o­gist in space,vainly try­ing to restore exo­tism with the use of par­ti­cles and frag­ments.” An ini­tia­tory jour­ney on the tracks of a young, unknown ethno­g­ra­pher, Claude Lévi-Strauss who, from 1936 to 1938 wan­dered the savan­nahs and forests of south­ern Brazil, in search of a prim­i­tive world.

A visual con­fronta­tion between the pho­tographs and the films that Lévi-Strauss took then and the film we made in the very places he vis­ited among the Indi­ans. In con­tra­po­si­tion to these images, sig­nif­i­cant extracts are included from his intel­lec­tual auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Tristes Tropiques”.