On 22 and 23 November the International Joris Ivens Symposium in Hanoi brought together a wonderful mix of Vietnamese film veterans, who had collaborated with Joris Ivens and his wife in the 1960s and a group of film scholars from Canada, USA, Indonesia, Australia, France, China and The Netherlands.

The magnificient book of film historian Günter Jordan about Joris Ivens' East-German films, entitled 'Unknown Ivens' ('Unbekannter Ivens') will be presented on 25 November at the legendary UT Connewitz film theater in Leipzig. Next to the lecture by Jordan 'Joris Ivens at DEFA and in the GDR' the films Die Windrose (1958, The Rose Compass) and Rain (1929, Regen) will be shown.

In 2011-12 the Chinese Australian artist Shen Jiawei painted a large canvas Spain 1937 (220x300). It depicts a group portrait of eminent intellectuals and artists who participated in the Spanish Civil War, including Joris Ivens, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda and André Malraux.

On 16 November at IDFA Amsterdam the documentary Marceline. A Woman. A Century made by German director Cordelia Dvorak will be premiered. This portrait of the strong-minded filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018) and fourth wife of Joris Ivens, saw its final editing two days before she passed away. In this film we see Marceline serving her guests coffee or vodka in her Paris apartment at the rue des Saints Peres.

At the occasion of the 120th birthday of Joris Ivens and the 50th anniversary of the debut of the film The 17th Parallel, The People’s War (Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens, 1968) the VietNam Film Institute in collaboration with the European Foundation Joris Ivens are organizing an international Ivens-seminar in Hanoi on 22-24 November. Renowned (film) scholars from Vietnam, Canada, USA, Australia, Indonesia, China and The Netherlands will provide an impulse to the Ivens Studies around the world. Former Vietnamese co ...

On 18 September Marceline Loridan-Ivens (19 March 1928, Epinal) passed away in Paris. She was born in a family originating from Lodz (Poland), which emigrated to France due to anti-semitism. During her working career she was pollster, filmmaker, producer and writer. She was the fourth and last wife of Joris Ivens, whom she first met in 1963. The couple married officially in 1977. Her life was marked by wars.

Award winning Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Davis presented his documentary Digging the Spanish Earth. Thanks to his interviews with Joris Ivens, Martha Gellhorn, Helen van Dongen and George Seldes, this film is of historical importance itself. Peter Davis also revisited locations in Madrid and Fuentedueña de Tajo where The Spanish Earth was shot in spring 1937.