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

The opening day of the conference MAV 2012, will be about Joris Ivens. Several experts will speak about the film ‘L’Italia non è un paese povero’ of Ivens (1959).

At the the 15th, 16th and 17th of November, the conference MAV “materiali di antropologia visiva” (materials concerning visual anthropology) will be held. This is organized by the National Museum of popular art and traditions and the University of Roma ‘Sapienza’. Among the many experts and filmmakers they expect Daniele Vicari, Paolo Taviani, Virgilio Tosi, StefanoMissio and a few former representatives of the ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), the employer of the film at that time. 

The tripartite television-documentary about the winning of gas and oil in Italy ‘L’Italia non è un paese povero’ is still in the full interest of Italy.



During a retrospective of the Taviani Brothers in the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, the film L’italia non e’un paese povero will be screened. The Taviani Brothers were the assistants of Ivens during the making of this film. They consider Joris Ivens as their ‘teacher’ en admired him very much.   

The Taviani brothers were approached by Ivens in 1960 and he asked them to be his assistants during the making of a film of three separate parts, about the extraction of gas and oil in Italy. They already had made some documentaries before, but they were still at the beginning of their film career. The third part of L’italia non e’un paese povero was eventually almost made by the Taviani brothers themselves because Ivens already started on the editing of the first two parts. Here they showed already a specific and personal style, that differs from the parts that Ivens made. Ivens saw the pictures of the Taviani brothers and afterwards he recommended them to make fiction films instead of documentaries. That is what they did and they became well known fiction filmmakers. The film L’italia non e’un paese povero was eventually censored by the Italian television (RAI) because there was too much poverty in it.

Klik hier voor meer informatie: http://www.fondazionecsc.it/news.jsp?ID_NEWS=1494&areaNews=8&GTemplate=default.jsp


Recently Fernão Pessoa Ramos wrote his book ‘A imagem-câmera’. This book is published by Papirus Editora from Brazil. It examines the relation between the experiences of a  filmmaker, the possibilities of the camera and the experiences of the spectator in the end. There are no illustrations in the book, except on the cover. For this cover the authors have chosen to use a still from the film ´rain´ of Joris Ivens. Ivens has invented and used new technologies for this film because he wanted to have more control over the ´eye of the camera´ and therefore automatically more control over the experiences of the spectators. The book is written in Portuguese. 

100 years ago, Joris Ivens filmed The wigwam.

Hundred years ago, in the spring of 1912, Joris Ivens filmed his first fictionmovie called The wigwam at an thirteen years old age. The filmshootings took place in the woods near the Heidevensweg and the uncultivated hills of the Kwakkenberg in Nijmegen. Ivens’ film career started with this film, which continued for 75 years and resulted in 80 films in the end. On Friday 29th of June, the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna will focus on The wigwam and the film will be presented in their program ‘Centi anni fa’.

Read more: Joris Ivens’ film career started with the abduction of a child.

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