THE GAMELAN DIGUL of INDONESIA CALLING

Anthony Liem wrote a text about the history of the Gamelan Digul, the first gamelan in Australia, which is an important historical object illustrating the fight for Indonesian independance against Dutch colonial rule. This gamelan is at display at the Monash University, Performing Arts Centre in Melbourne in the Margaret Kartomi Gallery.

Andries Deinum and a find of The Camera and I

After some 80 years after it was written by Ivens, a bound typoscript of his first autobiography The Camera and I, was found in Portland, Oregon, USA. Ella Thomas, who is for 32 years Director of Education for the Northwest Film Center, the Northwest region's largest and most comprehensive film arts organization, writes how she found it:

Oscar Winning '20 Days in Mariupol' (2023) and Ivens's '40 Days in Madrid' (1937)

When watching Mstyslav Chernov’s Oscar-winning film 20 Days in Mariupol, Alex Vernon, professor in English and specialist in 20th century war-literature, could not but see parallels with The Spanish Earth. This documentary by Joris Ivens, John Fernhout and Ernest Hemingway was the result of 40 days of film shooting in besieged Madrid in 1937. Both films draws on personal footage with an harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, in 1936 a new kind of warfare.

European Film Academy honors Ivens and Liftbridge as Treasure of European Film Culture

The European Film Academy (EFA) honors Joris Ivens, The Bridge (1928) and the vertical-lift bridge in Rotterdam (Koningshaven Bridge) by including it as Treasures of European Film Culture. It is for the first time that a Dutch filmmaker and location is included in this growing list of in the meanwhile 49 European locations in 24 countries, which or of extreme importance for the European film culture. According to the EFA these places of historical value need to be maintained and protected not just now but also for generations to come.Famou ...

'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. ...

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 ...

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)

Ivens Meets China

After years of preparations and research, professor Zhang Tongdao (University of Beijing) and Dutch filmmaker René Seegers finalized their four-part television series about Joris Ivens. In each part of 50 minutes one of Ivens’s Chinese films is key: 1- The 400 Million (1938); 2- Before Spring (1958); 3- How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976) and 4- A Tale of the Wind (1988).

Picasso Shared and Divided: The Artist and His Image in East and West Germany

In 1951 Joris Ivens met Pablo Picasso during a visit to his atelier in Vaucluses. Marion Michelle made a series of photos of them, together with poet Jacques Prévert, which are on display at the exhibition about 'Picasso: Shared and Divided' in Museum Ludwig, Cologne (25 September 2021-30 January 2022). After the Second World War Picasso was 'a hero of the left' and used in this way. His dove, symbol for world peace, became a tool for propaganda in the Eastern Bloc. What do we associate with Pablo Picasso today? A ...

Project of a Book on the History of FIAF

FIAF, in partnership with the Jan de Vaal Fund, invites film historians to submit proposals for thematic chapters as part of a forthcoming book on the 82-year history of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), both as an institution and as a coherent global community with its shared values, cultural missions, professional practices, scientific methods, and collaborative projects. The European Foundation Joris Ivens is an associate of FIAF since 2002 and André Stufkens is participating as co-editor of the book, together with Chris ...

Meeting of the editorial board of the FIAF-Bulletin with Eileen Bowser, Brigitte van der Elst, Jan de Vaal, Robert Daudelin and Raymond Borde, 1978. Coll. Jan de Vaal, Nijmegen.

Project Background

Over the last few years, the FIAF Historical Archive (consisting mainly of a wealth of written documents, photographs, and audio recordings) preserved at the FIAF Secretariat in Brussels has been painstakingly sorted, boxed, catalogued, partly digitized, and made accessible on the FIAF website, while more archival papers are still being acquired. This development has already encouraged or made possible the study of various aspects of the history of the film heritage field and of the film archive movement, of which FIAF has been at the centre since the 1930s.At the same time, the history of the Federation so far has not yet been the subject of a single comprehensively study (especially in English). Existing texts only cover specific aspects of that history, or present an out-of-date perspective, or are only available in other languages. The time therefore seems ripe to envisage such a project.

In 2017, Tineke de Vaal agreed to donate the FIAF-related archival papers of her late husband Jan de Vaal, founder and first director of the Nederlands Filmmuseum (today Eye Filmmuseum) and one of the great FIAF figures for nearly half a century, to the FIAF Historical Archive. Shortly afterwards, having been impressed by the work done by the FIAF Secretariat to preserve its archival documents and document FIAF's history, she announced her intention to donate a significant amount of money to the Federation for the specific purpose of researching and publishing a history of the Federation: a project which she thought should be managed by FIAF, under the leadership of FIAF's Senior Administrator, himself a historian of the film archive movement. The Jan de Vaal Fund was founded on 12 November 2018, to help fulfil the aim of facilitating the exchange and production of knowledge about the history of FIAF, thus honouring her late husband's memory.The FIAF History Project was established in 2019 as a result of this generous donation. A scientific committee, consisting of several FIAF Honorary Members, friends of Jan de Vaal, and historians of the film archive movement, was constituted, and held its first meeting in Lisbon in September 2019 to further define the project and its possible outcomes. It soon became clear to all that a comprehensive book on the history of the Federation should be the Project's number-one priority. Christophe Dupin (representing FIAF) and André Stufkens (representing the Jan de Vaal Fund) were nominated as co-editors of the proposed book.

Proposed scope and structure of the book

The proposed book, to be published by FIAF, will be an edited collection of texts by serious (but not necessarily 'established' historians on all aspects of the history of FIAF and of its role in the development of the global film heritage field. It should be the result of scholarly research using all possible archival evidence in the FIAF Historical Archive in Brussels and elsewhere.What the book is not intended to be is a collection of interviews with, or personal recollections by, people who have played an active part in that history (for those, we have our separate FIAF Oral History Project). Nor should it be a book of anecdotes. However, if we are keen to publish a book of academic stature, with a core readership of film historians and archivists, we think it should also be of interest to the non-academic reader with an interest in the topics it contains. We sincerely hope that it can therefore be scholarly but at the same time accessible, richly illustrated, and well produced.It is proposed that the book will be divided into two parts:
1- An extensive introductory text, by FIAF historian Christophe Dupin, will provide a general narrative of the history of the Federation, highlight key debates, events, projects, and institutional developments, and describe the broad evolution of its global network.
2- A collection of shorter thematic contributions by individual experts on specific aspects of FIAF's history. Possible areas of study include (but are not absolutely limited to):
- The history of FIAF as an organization (for instance, the evolution of its statutory and regulatory texts; histories of the specialized Commissions, etc.).
- Quantitative and qualitative study of the FIAF network and its evolution; typology of FIAF-affiliated institutions over time (cinematheques; national, regional, or university film archives; film museums; etc).
- The history of collective FIAF-led projects (for instance, FIAF's unified silent film catalogues; the Periodicals Indexing Project; the Film Pool; the FIAF Summer Schools; etc.), or important FIAF publications.
- The study of key events or periods (for instance, FIAF in World War II; the 1960 'schism' with Henri Langlois; the significance of the 1978 Brighton Congress; etc.).
- The relationship between FIAF and other organizations and associations (for instance, UNESCO; regional groups; other audiovisual archiving associations; etc.).
- The impact of the wider context (political, cultural, technological, etc) on FIAF as an institution and a community (for instance, FIAF and the Cold War; FIAF's political neutrality; the digital revolution; etc).
- The human side of FIAF's history (for instance, the respective roles of key personalities or of different generations of FIAF leaders; women in FIAF's history; etc).

How to submit a proposal

To be considered for inclusion in the book, please fill in the form below, which includes a professional biography and an abstract (both of not more than 300 words), by Wednesday 31 March 2021. We will let you know whether your proposal has been accepted or not by 30 June 2021. If so, your contribution will consist of a chapter of no more than 6,000 words, including references and figures.Note that proposals may be submitted in English, French, or Spanish. However, the book will be published solely in English. As our budget for translations will be limited, we will only be able to accept a limited number of chapters submitted in another language. Please indicate in the form below whether or not you will be able to submit your text in English.Should you have any questions or comments about this project, do not hesitate to write to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..Christophe Dupin (FIAF) & André Stufkens (European Foundation Joris Ivens / Jan de Vaal Fund)See for submission form: https://www.fiafnet.org/pages/Formulaires/FIAF-History-Call-en.html