Every year IDFA's Guest of Honor compiles their Top 10 favorite films that inspired them. This year Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková will present her Top 10 in a public Filmmaker Talk. The films will also be screened during IDFA 2018. She selected among others Joris Ivens' La Seine a rencontré Paris (1957). Třeštíková explains why these films are important to her in this article.

On Monday May 28th the VietNam Film Institute presented a new documentary film about Ivens in VietNam at the occassion of a ceremony in Nijmegen celebrating 50 years of solidarity between Nijmegen and VietNam. Mrs. Ngo Thi Hoa, Ambassador of VietNam in The Hague, Mr. Hubert Bruls, mayor of Nijmegen, and activists from the 1960s and 70s supporting VietNam, attended this meeting. The theme 'Looking back for a better future' was illustrated with specialists presenting innovative technologies from Nijmegen in nowadays projects in Viet ...

The DEFA Foundation in Berlin released a new German DVD with Ivens-films in conjunction with the book Günter Jordan published about these films. DEFA already had launched a DVD with Song of the Rivers in and now presents The Wind Rose, Friendship Will Win and The Peace Cycle Tour Warsaw-Berlin-Prague 1952.

The long awaited book (in German) about  Ivens and his East-German films, written by thé specialist in this field, Günter Jordan, has been published by the DEFA Foundation. This beautiful book describes in 680 pages the triumph in the 1950’s, the condemnation at the end of the 1960’s  when Ivens became persona non grata in the GDR, until the resurrection of Ivens’ DEFA-films.

Chiara Bonfiglioli recently published her splendid book chapter about the DEFA filmproduction Die Windrose (1957, The Compass Rose) of which Joris Ivens was supervisor. ‘Die Windrose is a significant example of cross-border cooperation and provides important insights on the internationalists networks that developed after 1945 between Western-Europe, the Soviet Union and the Third World.’

Since six years Tian Wang (1976, Tongxiang 桐乡), is doing research for a dissertation about Joris Ivens and Modern China between 1938 and 1988. It was Régis Debray who advised her to study Ivens’ films in the framework of the theories of French historian Marc Ferro ‘Le film, l’agent et produit de l’Histoire’. For Tian Wang it is essential not only to study paper documents, but especially to meet and speak the people involved, both in China and the West.

Prof. Ariel Heryanto from Monash University in Melbourne lectured about Joris Ivens and Indonesia Calling in Djakarta. In his vivid presentation in Bahasa Indonesia (also a version with English subtitles is available) he discussed the tensed relationships between Indonesia, Australia and The Netherlands both back then and now. The opening sequence of Ivens' film showing an Australian society with diversity could be a model for their relationships. Since 22 October, when this film made by Jakarticus, was put on-line then thous ...