Now 97, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Xuan Phuong remains remarkably lucid. Her calm yet resolute voice carries memories that stretch across nearly a century, as vivid as if those chapters of history had never receded. One of these chapters covers her collaboration between 1965 and 1970 with Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens during the production of three films about the war for unification, independence and peace in Vietnam. In 2011, she was honored by the French government with the Legion of Honour. In 2024, she was named among the BBC’s 100 most inspiring women of the year, recognized for her contributions to culture and education. Journalists Phuoc Sang and Nguyen Hue of VietNamnet wrote an article about her of which large parts are quoted here.
A 16-year-old girl who ran away to join the revolution
Nguyen Thi Xuan Phuong was born in 1929 in Huế, into an intellectual family. Huế is situated in central Vietnam and is famous for its Imperial Citadel.
Throughout the wars against French colonialism and US intervention, she held many roles: explosives technician, medical assistant, journalist, interpreter, and pediatric doctor.
In early 20th-century Hue, strict social norms shaped the lives of young women. At 15 or 16, girls were expected to stay home, learn cooking and embroidery, and prepare for marriage. That was the prescribed path for someone like Phuong.
In 1945, World War II ended with Japan’s surrender following two atomic bombings. The Japanese military apparatus in Indochina quickly collapsed. Seizing the moment, on September 2 at Ba Dinh Square, President Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Declaration of Independence, giving birth to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
At the time, Phuong was just 16 - a student with no prior exposure to politics or war. Yet, stirred by calls to defend the nation, young people of her generation responded with fervor. “Within every Vietnamese lies a seed of patriotism. In ordinary times, it goes unnoticed, but when the country is in turmoil, it awakens and compels those quiet emotions to rise,” she recalled.
Phuong pictured with her family five days before running away to join the revolution. Photo: NVCC
In 1946, she and her uncle, five years her senior, agreed to meet at dawn at a ferry terminal and head to the resistance base. They brought a bicycle for the journey. But shortly after setting out, her uncle realized he had forgotten the pump and turned back, leaving her waiting.
Then gunfire erupted from across the river - French forces had begun a sweep. The boat was leaving. Without hesitation, she abandoned the bicycle and boarded alone, leaving her uncle behind. She carried nothing but a pair of sandals and a change of clothes. From that moment, her revolutionary life began, bound by a promise: once you go, you go all the way.
In liberated zones, she was assigned to propaganda and psychological operations in Hue. Fluent in French, she wrote leaflets hidden in bundles of vegetables sold to French soldiers, while also broadcasting messages to inspire resistance and patriotism.
Mrs. Nguyen Thi Xuan Phuong in Ho Chi MInh City, April 2026. Photo Vietnamnet.
Learning to make explosives in the forest
By 1947, Phuong was recruited by the Ministry of National Defense into the Technical Research Department, tasked with producing explosives and weapons. She did not fully grasp the dangers at the time, only that the country needed people who could read French technical materials and carry out the work.
Among the first group of technical staff, she was the only woman. Her colleagues gave her the nickname “the beauty of explosives.”
Recalling her early days in Viet Bac, she vividly remembered her first meeting with Tran Dai Nghia, a pioneer of Vietnam’s defense industry. In a makeshift classroom in the forest, engineer Thuy Lieu was teaching how to produce fulminate explosives in French when two visitors arrived.
A Ministry official introduced one of them: “This is Tran Dai Nghia, an engineer who has returned from France at Uncle Ho’s call. He will guide us in producing weapons to fight the French.”
From that simple introduction began years of study and weapons production.
Under his direct guidance, Phuong and her colleagues learned to mix explosives, produce recoilless cannons for anti-tank warfare, and manufacture various types of mines.
At first, the work seemed straightforward - follow French manuals, measure chemicals, and mix according to formula.
“I initially thought making explosives was like a pharmacist preparing cough medicine, just following instructions. But once I started, I realized how dangerous it was. A single mistake could trigger an explosion at any moment,” she said.
Manuals warned that just 2 grams of fulminate could kill a person, while they had to produce it in large quantities for the battlefield.
Accidents were inevitable. One morning, while she stepped out briefly to fetch food for a colleague, the makeshift lab - little more than a thatched shelter - suddenly burst into flames. The person inside suffered severe burns, with only their eyes spared thanks to protective goggles.
On another occasion, she had just stepped outside when a loud explosion erupted behind her. Turning back, she saw a colleague lying on the ground. Standing amid the chaos, she nearly fainted, questioning whether she could continue.
Taking on special missions
In the years that followed, Phuong moved across the Viet Bac base, taking on various roles - studying artillery trajectories, working in journalism, and later training as a senior medical assistant.
In 1967, while working as a doctor at the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, she was summoned by President Ho Chi Minh. She was assigned to protect the health and serve as interpreter for Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens and his wife during a field trip to one of the most intense war zones.
President Ho Chi Minh explained: “We may make 20 films, but none might be shown in capitalist countries because they will call it communist propaganda. But with these two - long-time friends of oppressed nations - their films can be screened in the US.”
The film crew of The 17th Parallel - People’s War. Photo: NVCC
Phuong left her family behind and joined the film crew heading to Vinh Linh, Quang Tri.
They traveled in two separate vehicles in case of bombing. By day, they faced air raids while filming. At night, they sheltered in tunnels about 9 meters underground.
One night, deep in the tunnels, a desperate cry echoed: “Is there a doctor here? Help us!”
Instinctively, Phuong grabbed her medical bag and rushed through the dark passageways. A woman lay exhausted on the cold ground, in labor. After calming her and guiding the delivery, the baby was born.
“I handed the baby to the father after cutting the cord and cleaning the child. Suddenly, his cries of joy filled the tunnel: ‘My child! My child!’ The baby cried, the father sobbed, and the entire tunnel fell silent. I couldn’t hold back my tears,” she recalled.
The moment was quietly captured on film. Watching it later, Joris Ivens placed a hand on her shoulder and said: “Phuong, that is our profession - capturing the moments when life ultimately triumphs over death.”
A turning point toward war journalism
That journey to Vinh Linh marked a profound turning point. Though she wore a white coat and held a respected position, she felt a growing unease witnessing lives lost to war while remaining on the sidelines.
Joris Ivens told her: “Phuong has the qualities of a filmmaker. At this time, the country needs not only doctors or interpreters, but those who can document the war for the world.”
Encouraged, she sought permission to change careers despite opposition. Ultimately, she chose to leave her stable medical role to become a war correspondent, where the line between life and death was ever present. Her family, understanding her deeply, did not stop her.
Nguyen Quang Tuan climbing the flagpole. Photo: Xuan Phuong
In later missions, she and the film crew faced death repeatedly. One unforgettable scene involved filming the national flag atop a pole on the northern bank of the Hien Luong River at sunrise, its shadow cast over the southern side - a symbol of an indivisible nation.
The pole stood over 30 meters tall, in an area under constant bombardment. As cameraman Nguyen Quang Tuan climbed, a bomb exploded nearby. Phuong and Ivens were buried under debris. When pulled out, Ivens’s first question was: “Where is Tuan?”
Looking up, they saw him still climbing, clinging to the pole amid smoke and dust.
He reached the top. The wind fell still. The crew held their breath. Seconds passed - then the wind rose, the flag unfurled, its shadow stretching southward. The shot lasted just 50 seconds.
Back in Hanoi, watching the footage, the entire crew broke into tears.
The film The 17th Parallel - People’s War later gained international acclaim, screened widely in the US as President Ho Chi Minh had predicted. It premiered in France on March 6, 1968, and from November 26 that year, was shown globally to great impact.
The small independent publisher Bastante in Santiago, Chile, will soon release the first Spanish edition of Joris Ivens’ first autobiography, The Camera and I: La cámara y yo.
Vicente Braithwaite has been working on this publication since 2024. In Ivens’ first autobiography, he describes the period up to 1946, followed by a chapter that briefly covers the years 1945 to 1967. Because Ivens is not a historian but an artist, not all historical facts are entirely accurate; in particular, the description of *The Spanish Earth* is personal and fictional.
The genesis of *The Camera and I* is complex. The Ivens Archive contains typescripts from the years 1941–1944, when Ivens was residing in the United States. In 1939, Random House Publishing gently had rejected his proposal to publish his Chinese diary about The 400 Millions because his English was not good enough. During the war years, in between film projects, he worked on his memoirs, beginning with his youth in Nijmegen. He enlisted the help of renowned film historian Jay Leyda, then film curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and an Eisenstein specialist, and Hope Corey, the wife of actor and film director Jeff Corey. The individual chapters were bound in only a few copies in 1944, just as Ivens was leaving for Australia to carry out film assignments for the Dutch government. He gave one bound copy to André Deinum, born in Workum (Frisia, The Netherlands), but a film professor in the U.S. The book, which had progressed until Power and the Land (1941), remained unfinished for decades. In the late 1940s and 1950s, those involved in the U.S. faced difficulties with their work due to blacklisting by the U.S. government, in which their friendship with Ivens played a role. It was not until the end of the 1960s, when Ivens returned to the Netherlands and his archive was gathered in a permanent location at the Netherlands Film Museum, that the book could be completed, primarily by Jay Leyda. Incidentally, Leyda is not mentioned anywhere in the 1969 publication.
The book was translated from English into various languages, including Dutch, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese. In 1980, students at UNAM, the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos in Mexico City, translated the book into Spanish, but this was for internal use only. Thus, this marks the first time the book is being made available to the public in Chile.
The cover of the Spanish version of The Camera and I by Bastante publishers, Santiago de Chile.
The Italian, English and Duthjc version of Ivens' first autobiography.
On October 10, 2025, Caroline Hoebens received her Ph.D. from Utrecht University for a dissertation on the film music in the films of Joris Ivens. This marks the first time that the music and sound, as employed by Ivens in his films, have been the subject of a comprehensive study. Joris Ivens himself played the piccolo, a small transverse flute, which may explain his sensitivity to the use of music. Wind instruments, in particular, play such an important role in the music for A Tale of the Wind (1988), composed by Michel Portal. As a true avant-gardist, Ivens loved experimenting with the use of sound and music. For instance, he produced the first sound film in the Netherlands with Philips-Radio (1931), commissioned Lou Lichtveld to compose music for his silent film Rain in 1932, and collaborated with renowned composers such as Hanns Eisler in 1933 in Magnitogorks (Song of Heroes) and Dmitri Shostakovich. This resulted, among other things, in the first film music composed using Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique (The 400 Million) and for Regen (Rain, 1929).
Caroline Hoebens holding her diploma, with the applauding professors behind her.
Caroline Hoevens writes in her “Foreword and Acknowledgments”: “The idea to submit a dissertation proposal was encouraged by Professor Philippe Cathé. Between 2012 and 2014, he supervised my master’s research at the Sorbonne in Paris. During his courses, he had repeatedly expressed his enthusiasm for Dutch cinema and the work of Joris Ivens, who lived in Paris for many years and is perhaps the best-known Dutch filmmaker in France. Thanks in part to his suggestions for relevant research topics and his advice, the proposal was approved in 2017. Professor Cathé supervised me during the first years of my doctoral studies, when I laid the groundwork for the research. I would like to thank him first and foremost for this.
The inspiring conversations with André Stufkens, director of the Joris Ivens Institute, were particularly significant during the preliminary research. He convinced me of the relevance of the issue by pointing out the striking musical fragments in Ivens’ oeuvre. During the same period, Bert Hogenkamp, a media historian and specialist in Dutch documentaries, shared his thoughts with me on conducting research into music in Ivens’ documentaries. I am therefore grateful to both of them, as well as to the staff at the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund and the Dr. Hendrik Muller’s Vaderlandsch Fund for their confidence in the project’s success.
At the end of 2020, when most public institutions in Paris had closed their doors for an extended period and social activities were strongly discouraged, I found myself with my back against the wall because I realized I would not be able to write the dissertation in French as I had planned in 2017. In February 2021, I therefore decided to try to conduct the research and to complete my doctoral studies at the Univrsity if Utrecht. I wrote a letter to musicologist and professor Emile Wennekes. He had published several articles on music in Dutch film. Emile immediately showed interest in what I had written so far. He was open to supervising the final phase of my dissertation, which, as it turned out, took longer than anticipated. Without his commitment and without his comments, remarks, and additions, I would have given up. I am therefore deeply grateful to him. I would also like to thank the assistant supervisor of the research, Michiel Kamp, for his advice and feedback.
Friends, academics, doctoral candidates, and musicians—including Ariadna Alsina Tarrés, Yvan Adriano Zetina Ríos, Virginia Mendez, Andrés Felipe Molano Ruiz, and Jordi Olivar—contributed to identifying specific musical excerpts, understanding the (cultural) significance of certain pieces or genres, and translating Spanish-language (song) lyrics. I met some of them on the campus of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, where I stayed for a large part of my research and drew much inspiration. Géraud Guilloud, Sébastien Marrec, and Yann-Riccardo Bertrand helped me write the French-language academic texts. There are certainly more people who provided me with advice or shared an idea with me that I made generous use of, but whose names I have forgotten or have not included.
I would like to express my gratitude to all of them. My final thanks go to my sister, Roos Hoebens. From the beginning to the end of the research, she helped me by proofreading my texts, catching weak phrasing, and offering modest suggestions regarding content. She did all this despite having little interest in the study of film or music and having majored in history. Without her substantial contribution, the final result would have taken even longer to materialize. My thanks to Roos are shared with my parents, who have always been there to assist me in arranging or resolving practical matters and problems so that I could carry out this research, and to listen to my ideas, plans, and doubts, responding with encouragement or helping me see things from a different perspective.'
The dissertation Music in the Documentaries of Joris Ivens is available for download via Open Access.
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.
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:
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.
Read more: Oscar Winning '20 Days in Mariupol' (2023) and Ivens's '40 Days in Madrid' (1937)
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.
Famous locations of this list are the great staircase in Odessa from Eisensteins’ Pantserkruizer Potemkin(1925), the Trevi Fontain in Rome (La Dolce Vita, 1960) and the Notting Hill Bookshop (Notting Hill, 1999) in Londen.
See: https://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/activity/koningshaven-bridge-rotterdam-netherlands/
With The Bridge Joris Ivens freed the filmcamera, because he brought to live a 'dead iron machine' without a fixed tripod, without a script, without actors, filming spontanously, climbing and performing break neck tricks on the beams of the lift bridge. This lift bridge was opened at the end of 1927 and within a few weeks Ivens alerasdy started filming with a Kinamo hand held 35 mm. film camera. This groundbrealing film presented The Netherlands as a new, modern country, no longer with the folkoristic images of wind mills and Volendam puff pants. This short film conquered immediately the avant-garde cinema theaters of Europe. With The Bridge Ivens became worldwide one of the pioneers of a new film language. He discovered himself during the editing the effects of rythm in film, of directions and movements, and called his film 'My Mondrian', with a game and balance of opposites. He also was amazed by the effects of perceptual psychology: it is possible to create a world on its own on the cinema screen. The simple narrative looked very realistic: a train from the south is arriving at the railbridge, but has to stop because the liftbridge opens for passing boats, and only after the bridge is closed again the train can continue its track to the north. It wasn't realistic, but an invented drama: ‘There is also such thing as a train timetable, preventing trains to stop', wrote the journal of train drivers. For Ivens this result was quintessential for the start of his film career. From that moment on he knew that he could create film art with a world on its own.
Joris Ivens (Nijmegen 1898-Parijs 1989) grew up in the family of Kees Ivens, an entrepreneur in photo equipment and his grandfather Wilhelm Ivens, a prolific photograper. In these three generations one can notice the for The Netherlands unique organic transformation from photography (the art of the 19th century) to film art (the art of the 20th century).
Since 1997 the Joris Ivens Archives are established in his birthplace Nijmegen which is managed by the European Foundation Joris Ivens in the Regionaal Archief Nijmegen.
Award and decorations Joris Ivens
1955 Ivens ontvangt de Wereld Vredesprijs in Helsinki.
1957 Wint een Gouden Palm op het filmfestival van Cannes en een Golden Gate Award in
San Francisco met de film La Seine a rencontré Paris (De Seine ontmoet Parijs).
1966 Zilveren Leeuw op filmfestival van Venetië voor Pour le Mistral
1967 Ontvangt de Internationale Lenin Prijs voor Wetenschap en Cultuur in Moskou.
1978 Het Royal College of Art in Londen verleent Ivens een ere-doctoraat.
1984 Wordt benoemd tot Commandeur van de Legion d`Honeur (Franse ridderorde) door
de Franse president Mitterand.
1985 Ontvangt Het Gouden Kalf (Hoofdprijs op het Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht)
uitgereikt door minister Brinkman.
Wordt geridderd tot Groot Officier van de Republiek Italië.
Ontvangt de gouden medaille voor "grote verdiensten voor de Schone Kunsten" van de
Spaanse koning Juan Carlos.
1987 Ontvangt de "Che Guevarra Prijs" in Cuba.
1988 Krijgt uit handen van Gina Lolobrigida de Gouden Leeuw voor zijn gehele oeuvre op
het internationale filmfestival van Venetië.
Wordt door burgemeester Ien Dales benoemd tot ereburger van zijn geboortestad
Nijmegen.
1989 Wordt tot Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw gedecoreerd door koningin
Beatrix.
Sterft in Parijs op 28 Juni.
Marceline Loridan-Ivens (zijn vrouw) wint een Felix ("de Europese Oscar") voor Ivens`
complete oeuvre en in het bijzonder voor de laatste film die ze samen maakten Une
Histoire de Vent (Het verhaal van de wind).
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 inform at all what was really going on in Indonesia. Gerda Jansen Hendriks, a film historian and specialist in Dutch propgandafilms about the Indonesian fight for independence, states about Indonesia Calling : 'The controversy is actually not about the film itself. It is the person of Ivens. Conservative colonials wanted to take revenge on Ivens, becase he was regarded as a threat to their position.' Next to footage of Joris Ivens's film and an excerpt of an interveiw with him about the film also Anthony Liem is filmed. In Sydney he testifies of the support his father-in-law Fred Wong gave to the strike of the harbour workers and to the production of the film. 
This splendid documentary provides an excellent oversight of the complex political and historical processes of the Dutch decolonisation process. Already in 1949 the Dutch government knew about the war crimes committed by the Dutch army. It was Cornelis van Rij, a former member of the resistance and lawyer, who investigated three exemples of such violent acts in 1949, but his clear juridical conclusions were covered by the government and not made public.
According to In-Soo Radstake everybody on both sides were victims, and suffered from pain and bitter disappointment. It is remarkable however that in the national debate, and also in this documentary, the highest political responsible figure of these war crimes, prime-president Louis Beel, is never mentioned. His nickname was not without reason 'the Sphynx'.
The film Sellling a Colonial War was premiered at IDFA and can now be seen in Dutch cinemas (January 2024). 
The power of representation is demonstrated clearly in the way the Dutch government chose to present the Indonesian War of Independence and its violent aftermath (1945-1950). Three quarters of a century on, competing perceptions of the events still remain. Filmmaker In-Soo Radstake casts a broad view as he investigates a multitude of perspectives, including those of the Dutch government, servicemen in the Dutch and the Royal Netherlands East Indies armies, Indonesian independence fighters, the international community and several population groups in the former Dutch East Indies. The Bersiap killings, a neglected episode in which specific groups of citizens were collectively considered as enemies of the revolution, is among the subjects touched upon.
Extensive interviews with international experts provide insight in the complex relationships in the former colony and the global context. Archive footage—some of which has only been discovered decades after the events—not only tells a story of decolonization but also chronicles our dealings with the past.
