In what way can reflecting on worlds very far from our own, either in space or time, bear relevance for us today? Is there a scientific legacy - a before and after Lévi-Strauss - in anthropology? This documentary retraces the intellectual path of the author of "Tristes tropiques" ("A World on the Wane") and "La Pensée sauvage" ("The Savage Mind"), Claude Lévi-Strauss. The anthropologist and founder of structural anthropology in France is portrayed via numerous selected extracts of interviews he has given since the 1960s. The film is a fascinating introduction into the mind of a man who is interested in all men. Lévi-Strauss has great confidence (in spite of a pessimistic view of our contemporary world) in the creative capacities of the human mind.

Ulrike Ottinger weaves her personal memories of Parisian bohemianism and the serious social, political and cultural upheavals of the time into a cinematic “figure poem.”