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‪Greatly influenced by the surrealist movement, Jean Rouch was keen on “putting challenging objects into circulation.” He clearly succeeded in doing so by coining “ciné-transe,” a striking neologism he willingly acknowledged to be somewhat “mysterious.” Ever since, numerous academic publications allude to “ciné-transe,” but no two with the same background meaning. Indeed, its discoverer, Jean Rouch, only very seldom mentions it, and even when he does, his definition varies from one occurrence to the next. Taking for granted that no new exegesis of “ciné-transe” will ever make it fully intelligible, the present contribution will make no attempt at revealing its hidden motivations. It rather intends to pave the reader’s way on a stroll along Jean Rouch’s successive statements, in the hope to reconstruct the lineaments of his intellectual trajectory and perhaps bring to light some of its unnoticed virtues. We will start by showing that “ciné-transe” can be seen as a sort of palimpsest giving access to most if not all of Jean Rouch’s concerns and aspirations, witness to his gradual discarding of the very positivist conception of filming he had long stood by. We will then emphasize that this notion contains several avenues for future research on previously neglected topics. “Ciné-transe,” far from being restricted to what Jean Rouch’s contribution to anthropology is generally reduced to – the invention of shared anthropology – is also a powerful theoretical shifter inviting us to consider that the cinematographic experience can lead to unique encounters with oneself, on either side of the camera.‪