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 ...

.A surprise after seven decades

This is his story. ‘My father, Jean Gratecap, died in October 1955, half a year after I was born. Afterwards my mother and my two older sisters aged 6 and 7 went to live with my maternal grandparents near Angoulême. Around the age of 12, I discovered a letter from Jean's mother designating me as an illegitimate child. I kept that weight for a long time for myself alone. Several events during my life reopened the wound or rekindled my doubts, until at the end of 2020, on the advice and support of my wife Marie, I let genetic tests be done by myself and one of my sisters. These gave me a partial answer: we didn't have the same father.

My mother, who is 96 years of age and still alive, explained to me that she had turned away from her married life at a time when Jean had made it very complicated. Georges Émon was probably my father, but as he had always claimed to be infertile (he never had children with his wife), my mother was extremely surprised.

My research first allowed me to locate four of Georges' little nephews and one of his nieces. I contacted them all and I was particularly well received by one of them, Pierre D. He told me about his family, gave me photos, and supreme favour, did a genetic test which verified our relationship, and which validated Georges as my biological father. Georges was born in 1915 and died in 2010, but I never met him and he was never aware of my existence.

Jean-Pierre Gratecap-Émon at the Ivens Archives, Nijmegen, 30 May 2022.

Peace Movement

Further research led me to his career and whereabouts. He was a railway worker (SNCF), a very active militant in the union (CGT) and the Communist Party (PCF). He came close to beating a debuting Jacques Chirac in the legislative elections of the Corrèze in 1967 (49,27% versus 50,93%).

Georges Émon was in Charente departmental secretary of the Mouvement de la paix (Peace Mouvement, the French branch of the World Council for Peace). In 1950 he joined the French delegation to the second World Peace Congress in Warsaw. This international meeting was originally scheduled for Sheffield, a symbolic place, because this English city had suffered enormously by the bombing of the Luftwaffe in December 1940. However the British authorities refused visas to many delegates and the Congress was forced to move to Warsaw at the last moment. This congress was filmed by Joris Ivens in Peace Will Win (1951).

I learned to admire and love this father, which I never met, committed he was until the end of his life, but I missed seeing him ‘in motion’ terribly.

The Joris Ivens Foundation opened the doors and I was able to watch a German version of the film, a film that cannot be viewed elsewhere. At least not in France, where a too vulnerable copy is being kept in the Center National du Cinéma français (CNC) vaults. I am extremely grateful to the Ivens foundation that I’ve got the opportunity to watch the film.

And there he was, alive and kicking. The cameraman stopped twice on the face of Georges, although not entirely, and I see him in all 1 second being attentive or clapping. My father winks at me 72 years later.

I undertook a long process to also bear his name, and to call myself Jean-Pierre Gratecap-Émon.

I went to the end of my quest, and the confirmation of my illegitimacy accompanied by the discovery of a remarkable father liberated and calmed me.

And now a new gift is given to me: a Polish film archive will provide me of an even longer version of Ivens’ film, which maybe presents new footage of my real father’.

Georges Émon carrying the French flag as delegate of the French Mouvement de la Paix, during the Peace Congress in Warsaw.
Source: 'La CGT en Charente', VO Editions, 1995.

Joris Ivens, filmstill from Peace Will Win: Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, French physicist and Nobel Prize Winner (together with his wife Irene Joliot-Curie), speaking during the Peace Congress, which he presided.