The Centre Pompidou in Paris is paying tribute to filmmaker Chris Marker from 16 October until 16 December. Not only through his films, but also by exploring the path of his inspirations, friendships and encounters.. Chris Marker collaborated with his friend Joris Ivens for various projects: …a Valparaiso, Rotterdam Europort, Le ciel, la terre and Loin de Vietnam. On 23 november the restored version of Loin de Vietnam (Far from Vietnam, 1967) will be shown.
Exhibition room with avant-garde films at the MMKA, Arnhem
From 20 October 2013 to 23 February 2014, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (MMKA) exhibits The Melancholic Metropolis: Cityscapes between Magic and Realism, 1925-1950. Magic realist painting is displayed alongside photography and film of the same era that visualizes the metropolis as a place of stillness, loneliness, and melancholy. Ivens’s film Rain is on exhibit permanently, alongside other avant-garde films. Also photos of Germaine Krull, Ivens’wife at that time, who inspired him to film cranes and bridges, are presented.
The Cultural Studentcentre of the University and high-school of Amsterdam CREA has started a course `Dutch masters in documentary history`. Besides Bert Haanstra and Johan van der Keuken, Joris Ivens will be discussed in detail as well.
The dutch masters of documentary film have placed the Netherlands on the world map since the fifties. Since then the Netherlands is well known for its documentary tradition. They had also a big influence on the development of documentary in the Netherlands. This was sooner recognized abroad than in their homeland.
In the course they examinate the influence of these Dutch masters on Dutch documentaryfilm. Besides viewing and discussing the works of the makers, there will be also a focus on the context and the background of the filmmakers, The course takes six weeks and will continue if there are enough participants.
For more infomation take a look at the website of CREA.
Hanns Eisler made the music for 'Komsomol', among other Ivens films.
Because of the passing of the famous composer Hanns Eisler 50 years ago, the film "Regen" of Joris Ivens will be screened on 3rd October 2012 at Centraltheater Leipzig as part of the event: "Eisler I Sohn ohne Stadt- eine musikalisch-szenische Revue zum 50. Todestag von Hanns Eisler". There were ‘Hans Eissler days’ organized in Berlin ass wel. Here they also showed two films of Ivens;‘Heldenlied (Pesn o gerojach) and ‘Regen’ because Eisler composed music for these films.
Read more: Hans Eisler passed away 50 years ago: Filmprogram in Berlin and Leipzig
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.
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:
