Cover of The Moving Image, The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), 2013.  

Going through the files of Marion Michelle, kept by the European Foundation Joris Ivens in Nijmegen, is like reading a crime novel. Sabine Lenk, who researched these files: ‘her papers document important moments from a quintessential conflict inside the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF, International Federation of Film Archives). Some of the best known film archivists such as Henri Langlois, Ernest Lindgren and Jacques Ledoux, played a significant part, as well as FIAF-president Jerzy Toeplitz. The latest issue of the ‘The Moving Image’ [ISSN 1532-3978] published her article ’Then began the battle royal”, written in collaboration with André Stufkens.

In this article the conflict is reconstructed from the point of view of Marion Michelle. Being the secretary of FIAF she functioned as a catalyst of this conflict, accelerating a development inside FIAF necessary to force a club of old friends to reform and become a professionally structured and ever growing association of film archives.

Read more: Marion Michelle and the FIAF Crisis 1959-1962

Still from Loin de Vietnam / Far from Vietnam (1967)

Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York has announced the line up for 'Cinema of Resistance', a special series dedicated to films that are political in both subject and execution. Among others two films of Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens are included. One of the Highlights of this series is the North American premiere theatrical run of a new restoration of the revolutionary omnibus film Far From Vietnam (Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, 1967)

“There are many different kinds of films that could be described as political. But this series—inspired by the new omnibus film Far From Afghanistanand the new restoration of the 1967 classic that inspired it, Far From Vietnam—calls attention to movies that are political in both content and practice,” says Director of Cinematheque Programming Dennis Lim. “These are the works of filmmakers who believe in cinema as an instrument of struggle and change. In many cases, they also remind us that radical politics goes hand in hand with radical art.”

Read more: Ivens` Cinema of Resistance in Lincoln Center, NY

The poetic documentary of Joris Ivens, about the port Valparaiso in Chile, celebrated its 50th anniversary. They celibate this with the screening of two Joris Ivens films and a film of Chris Marker. 

Eva Olthof, an artist from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, is an ‘artist in residence’ for three months in Valparaiso and she works on an artproject, influenced by Ivens and Marker. Valparaiso is on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2001. 

The film has been made by Ivens after an invitation of Salvador Allende. The film became a filmproject for the students of the university of Santiago de Chile. With an intuitive filmstyle, Ivens created a sociological view on the hard life at and against the hills.  
The screening of …à Valparaiso took place at the 16th of May with this title: 

Read more: 50 years... AValparaiso in Valparaiso

At the 13th of April, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will open again. The redesigning of the museum is already much praised. In the room of the twenties, ‘Philips radio’ of Joris Ivens will be shown permanently as an icon for modernism. Besides the paintings of Piet Mondriaan, the chairs of Gerrit Rietveld, the photographs of Man Ray and a real airplane of Frits Koolhoven, the pictures of ‘Philips Radio’ -the first sound film in the Netherlands- reveals how the country changed in a modern industrial society.

The Rijksmuseum has always been a national treasure house, which is showing art and history as one unit. That kind of presentation choked with the art pieces of the beginning of the 20th century. Because of new purchases and borrowings of the Rijksmuseum, it became possible to make a completely new setup about the 20th century. New forms of art, like photography, film and design are now just important as older art forms. Harm Stevens, curator of the 20th century exhibition: “We show films like autonomous art. So no abridgements but integral”. The decoration is sober and modest. There are no digital adornments. “The art and the materials have to tell the story. The artistic and historical standard is defined by the rest of the museum and this is very high. We choose iconic pictures and classics”. 

Read more: Ivens Philips Radio in renewed Rijksmuseum

Filmstill from I by Dieudo Hamadi, 2013

How can somebody become a filmmaker in a country without cinema? Saturday 31 March the young Congelese filmmaker Dieudo Hamadi received for his film Atalaku  the Joris Ivens Award at the 35th Cinéma du réel Filmfestival in Centre Pompidou, Paris. The Joris Ivens Award is ment for debute or second films. Hamadi made his film in Kinshasa, a city of nine million inhabitants however without cinema. He filmed the presidential campaign in 2011, which was only the second free election since the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence in 1960. Gaylor, a penniless (like most of Kinshasa’s nine million inhabitants) pastor turns into an atalaku, which means a “crier” in Lingala. He makes a deal with the political candidate who has offered him the highest price for his services: ensuring the campaign’s street publicity and finding musicians to write the campaign’s song. 

Atalaku could certainly not have been made by a non-Congolese, given the extent to which the filmmaker becomes one with those he films – he is sometimes summoned to film ballot-box stuffing and the teeming crowd make way for him, dimly aware that having a witness is crucial. The film is constructed so as to show the domino effect between the atalaku and those he pays down the line – musicians, salespeople, dancers – to a point of confusion as Gaylor, who preaches for a very ephemeral god, is blamed for his inability to keep the promises of others. Hamadi’s choice to continue filming two weeks after the election alllowed him to accommodate an epilogue that breaks with this occasionally violent immersion, which also gives the film its force. (Charlotte Garson)

See for an interview with Diedo Hamadi: www.telerama.fr/cinema/dieudo-hamadi-realisateur-congolais-le-documentaire-est-la-forme-la-plus-compatible-avec-mon-environnement,95386.php
See for the website of Cinéma du réel: www.cinemadureel.org/en/


Since 1978, the international documentary film festival Cinéma du réel has been an outstanding international meeting point, where the public and professionals discover the current state of art of documentary films. The festival programs some two hundred films for its various sections, screened at the Centre Pompidou and other venues. One of the international film competitions is the First Film Competition for the Joris Ivens Award. The selected films and filmmakers of this Joris Ivens Award 2013 are: 

31st Haul by Denis Klebleev (Russia)
Atalaku by Hamadi Dieudo (France, Démocratic Republic of Congo)
Fiebres by Adrien Lecouturier (France)
Mirror of the Bride by Yuki Kawamura (Japan, France)
Rain by Gerard-Jan Claes, Olivia Rochette (Belgium, France)
Tchoupitoulas by Bill & Turner Ross (USA)
Terra de Ninguém (No Man’s Land) by Salomé Lamas (Portugal)
La Tierra Quieta (Still Land) by Ruben Margallo (Spain)

The festival will take place from March 21st till the 31st. The winners will be announced on Saturday March 30. The Joris Ivens Award is supported by Marceline Loridan-Ivens, the European Foundation Joris Ivens and the Association of Friends of Cinéma du réel.

Maria Bonsanti, former co-director of the Festival dei Popoli in Florence succeeds Javier Packer-Comyn called, after 4 years at the artistic direction of the festival, to other responsibilities in Brussels.

At the 17th of March, the Austrian Filmmuseum will be showing a film program about commercial films of avant-garde artists like Hans Richter, Joris Ivens and Johann Lurf. 

A lot of avant-garde artists worked both for non-commercial customers, like labour unions and idealistic groups, and for commercial customers at the same time. Moreover, a lot of innovations of the avant-gardist design and distribution established after it was commissioned by companies. Philips Radio (1931) is a good example of that: It is the first film with sound and the storytelling and the visual style of the film were both avant-garde. Ivens did this in all his commercial films: He always created and achieved a lot of freedom in his commercial films and because of that, these films were rather experimental and personal than suitable for advertisement. Read the the program: http://www.filmmuseum.at/jart/prj3/filmmuseum/main.jart?rel=en&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1219068743267&seldate=2013-03-17&curdate=2013-03-17

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