'Selling a Colonial War' proofs Dutch propaganda and censorship

After Joris Ivens made Indonesia Calling (1946) he was immedialtely accused of anti-Dutch propapaganda. Officers of the Secret Service also immediately proposed to withdraw Ivens'passport. Not in 1951, but already in 1945. In a new documentary Selling a Colonial War filmmaker In-Soo Radstake casts a broad view of perpectives, among others a remarkable view of former Dutch minister of foreign affairs Ben Bot. He confirms that it was the Dutch government itself which used pure propaganda, censorship and concealing language to disinform or not inf ...

Absurd spy thriller about Ivens and Van Dongen is indeed absurd

The Second Stage production of Spain in the Tony Kiser Theater in New York presented in December '23 a play about The Spanish Earth with Joris Ivens, Helen van Dongen, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos as the protagonists. Jen Silverman writes that Spain is not “a history play in the most conventional meaning.” It’s “set in 1936 in the West Village,” she says, then adds, “Sort of.” "This 90-minute comedy-drama is an absurdist-tinged fantasy that seizes a moment of history and bends it to the breaking point", she continues. And ...

A performance of Rain at a Climate Change programme

During a concert at the 'Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy' University of Music and Theater in Leipzig the subject of Climate Change was íllustrated' by Ivens' film Rain/Regen (1929) accompanying Hanns Eisler’s "14 Arten den Regen zu beschreiben" (*Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain). In a packed great concert hall this magnificent performance became a marvellous highlight of the night. The musicians played with energy, joy and much competence. Hanns Eislers and Joris Ivens art works were much appreciated by the audience and critics as well.The initia ...

A Gift of Ivens films

Recently the Ivens Foundation received six reels of a working copy of The 17th Parallel (1968). Laurence Lefèvre gave these reels to André Stufkens in her place in Montreuil. She got this working copy from her sister, the late Liliane Korb, who passed away in 2022. At the age of 26 Liliane Korb edited this long documentary about the peoples war and fight for independence of the Vietnamese people against the US occupation. Previously the Ivens Foundation also received an old print of Borinage from the Limburg Museum. Liliane Korb Lilia ...

How an Ivens film helps to reconstruct cultural heritage in Valparaiso

In 1963 Joris Ivens made, together with students from the university in Santiago de Chile, a poetic film mosaic of the Chilean harbour city Valparaiso, called …à Valparaiso. This film is part of the cultural heritage of this city, in 2003 elected UNESCO World heritage. Amanda Panizza Hevia published a plan to reconstruct the Casa de Los Siete Espejos (‘The House with Seven Mirrors’) as part of a new department of the regional archives of Valparaiso. ...

FICBUEU HONORS THE SHORT DOCUMENTARIES OF DUTCHMAN JORIS IVENS, A LEGEND OF SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CINEMA

The 16th Bueu International Film Festival pays tribute to Joris Ivens with both a retrospective of his short films and a splendid monograph on Ivens, written by Severiano Casalderrey. This book will be presented on Sunday 17th of Sepyember, it is the very first monograph on Ivens in the Galician language: La Expansion del documental a través de los cortometrajes de Joris Ivens (1898-1989).

Indonesia Calling at Independence Day Ceremony MuSeaum Sydney

On 17 August the MuSeaum in Sydney - aka the Australian National Maritime Museum - will organize a ceremony to commemorate Independence day of the Republic of Indonesia. Next to the presentations Ivens' short documentary film Indonesia Calling will be screened. In June prime-minister Mark Rutte of The Netherlands finally - after almost eight decades (!) - 'fully and without any reservation' acknowledged 17 August 1945 as the independence day of Indonesia.

The films of Ivens and photos of Krull reunited in an expo on Varietés

Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography in Amsterdam, presents until 22 October 2023 a special collection of avant-garde and surrealistic photographs, deriving from the Belgian art magazine Variétés dating from the 1920's. Next to 43 photos made by Germaine Krull also two films of Joris Ivens are shown permanently: Etudes des mouvements (1927, Paris, A Study in movement) and The Bridge (1928, Rotterdam). The film images of Ivens and the photos of Krull are very closely connected: these not only show the same subject matter: metal, th ...

Moving Documentaries, students in the Joris Ivens Archives

This year the Radboud University started a new course on documentary film, called Moving Documentaries. In the framework of this course a group of 15 students visited the Joris Ivens Archives and found out how archival documents can support research and shed new light on context and.content. The case study was Ivens' documentary The Spanish Earth (1937). At first the group watched the documentary in the film theater LUX on large screen. Afterwards they discussed the film and went to the Regional Archives Nijmegen, where the collection of the Jo ...

Women and the Far East in The 400 Million

During the Hanns Eisler Discourse at Humboldt University in Berlin on 5 and 6 November Japanese scholar Chiharu Wada (Meiji-Gakuin University, Tokyo) will lecture about Women and the Far East in the documentary The 400 Million (USA, 1939). Joris Ivens' documentary The 400 Million deliberately presents a "new" image of China, where women and men study together, "as in America". It is Ivens' perspective for a modern Chinese society in which women are equal to men, although this representation did not really matched reality in society i ...

A dissertation about the long relationship between Ivens and China

On 21 September Tian Wang (1976, Tongxiang 桐乡) was appointed doctor after a succesful defence of her dissertation 'Joris Ivens et la Chine : histoire d'une longue relation' 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 was essential not only to study paper documents, but especially to meet and speak the people involved, both in China and the West. The 572 pages of te ...

A short film about 50 years of solidarity between The Netherlands and Quang Tri 1972-2022

The Vietnam Film Institute has produced an engaging, short film Quang Tri - 50 Years of Aspiring for Peace. This deals with various forms of solidarity between the Netherlands and Quang Tri province over half a century (1972 - 2022). This film also shows about the work of USA Veterans regarding a culture of peace and portrays Chuck Searcy the chairman of Veterans for Peace (USA) speaking about 'Building a culture of peace and healing the wounds of war'.

Exhibition on Ivens in Quang Tri: Destination of Memories

On Monday July 25th the Vietnamese Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mr.Nguyen Van Hung, opened an exhibition in the Quang Tri Mine Action Centre (QTMAC) and Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing the effects of the War (RENEW). about Joris Ivens and the Medical Committee The Netherlands-Vietnam (MCNV). The Ivens Foundation in close collaboration with the Vietnam Film Institute created the panels about the relationship of Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens with Vietnam between 1965 and 1970. Their support of the liberation struggle ...

Looking for my father in an Ivens film

Recently a citizen from Montpellier travelled 1200 kilometres to visit the Joris Ivens Archives in order to find his biological father. There are many reasons why people around the world consult the Ivens collection, but this is a very special and personal one. He wanted to look for his father, which he has never known and met, in Ivens’ documentary Peace Will Win (1951)

On 20 August Mr. H.E. Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, Indonesian Ambassador in Canberra, Australia, will open the exhibition ‘Black Armada / Armada Hitam’ at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. It is about the support of the fight of independence of the young Republic of Indonesia by black banning Dutch ships in the harbour of Sydney, as presented in Ivens’ film Indonesia Calling (1946). On 31 August the Indonesian and Australian Ambassador will open the Indonesian version of this exhibition at the Benteng Independence Museum in Yogyakarta.

Mr. Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, Indonesian Ambassador in Canberra, shaking hands with Arthur Locke (92), who appears in Ivens' Indonesia Calling!, and Mr. Anthony Liem. During the opening of the exhibition on 20 August at the Australian National Maritime Museum. The Langen Suka, a Javanese gamelan group provided the background music, in honour of the display of the gamelan Digul. This gamelan was brought to Australia in 1943 by the Indonesian political prisoners from Boven Digul/ Tanah Merah near Merauke in Papua.
The opening was also officiated by Peter Dexter, ANMM Chairman and Kevin Sumption, ANMM director and Chairman.

Black Armada
On the exhibition panel its heading is 'Indonesia Calling' and on it is: ‘Not quite everything Dutch was 'black listed'. A lone but significant figure was working with Indonesians to tell the world about their struggle- and support from Australians.Dutch film maker Joris Ivens resigned his position as Film Commissioner for the Netherlands Indies Government.’
The 1946 film of Joris Ivens in Sydney harbour about ‘the ships that didn’t sail’: the black armada, shows the start of the spontaneous actions in October and November 1945, only a few months after the declaration of independence of Indonesia by president Sukarno on 17 August. These actions involved the Australian Maritime Unions together with the Chinese and Indian seamen and lasted for many years.
In Sydney a part of the authentic gamelan Digul, featured by Joris Ivens in Indonesia Calling! in 1946, will be at the exhibit. This bonang was made from cooking utensils, tin cans and packing cases in the Boven Digul camp, a Dutch prison for political prisoners in the depths of the New Guinean jungle.

Still from Indonesia Calling! showing the dancing sequence with Indonesian, Australian, Indian and Chinese seamen, in which the Digul gamalan can be seen and herad. (C) Joris Ivens Archive / EFJI.

Improving relationships between countries
The initiative of both exhibits derive form the Indonesian Ambassador who expressed his wish that events like Ivens’ documentary Indonesia Calling! should be incorporated in the Indonesian Independence History Record. He proposed and advised a permanent exhibit at the Museum of Indonesian Independence in Yogyakarta. The exhibition is also part of the commemoration of 'Merdeka 70', the 70th aniversary of Independance Day.

He emphasizes that initiatives like above would raise awareness of past close links and provide a major opportunity to improve today’s bilateral relationships the two neighbouring countries: Indonesia and Australia.
It proofs again the importance of the Ivens’ short film, made on a crucial historical moment relating the histories of Indonesia, Australia and The Netherlands.

The exhibitions have been planned and manufactured by the Maritime Museum in Sydney and the Indonesian translation of the exhibition panels were taken care of by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Both exhibitions are funded by the Australian and Indonesian governments.

For more information: http://www.anmm.gov.au/blackarmada.

Castle Vredeburg, a former colonial fortress in Yogyakarta, the housing of the benteng Independance Museum of Yogyakarta, where the exhibition Black Armada / Armada Hitam is on display.