Author Rina Sherman

Rina Sherman

Born in South Africa, Rina Sherman was exiled from the country and settled in France in 1984 where she has been living and working since. A classical musician by training, she worked as independent theatre actress and in television before turning to filmmaking. In 1990 she completed a doctorate with distinction at the Sorbonne, supervised by Jean Rouch. Her first novel, UITREIS, (Leaving) was published in South Africa in 1997 to critical acclaim. Writer, filmmaker and anthropologist, Rina has initiated several cultural projects. She was audiovisual director for the exhibition South Africa: Music of Freedom in La Villette, 1995. That same year, she was awarded the prestigious French prize, Villa Médicis Hors les Murs that allowed her to undertake extensive research in the film archives of the Southern African region. In 1996, she organized Jean Rouch's tour of South African universities in collaboration of the French Institute in South Africa (IFAS) and the Mission for Cooperation and Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Namibia. In 1997 Rina was awarded a Lavoisier Research Bursary by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the project The Ovahimba Years, a multi-disciplinary long-term research programme (drawings, oral tradition, video, film, photography) aimed at creating a living trace of Ovahimba cultural heritage. For a period of seven years, she filmed and photographed aspects of the daily and ritual lives of the Ovahimba.

The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema by Paul Henley

Rina Sherman

September 2013

Book Reviews

“I was trained by people who were important researchers and who were at the same time great poets.” - Jean Rouch in an interview with Enrico Fulchignoni. (1) When I read Paul Henley’s The Adventure of the Rea...