News

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 ...

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The `14th International Hemingway Conference’ started last Friday in Lausanne. It’s a biannual conference with dozens of lectures on various aspects of the life and work of American writer Ernest Hemingway. This year, five film scholars from the United States and France provide lectures dealing with the cooperation between Hemingway and Ivens during the Spanish Civil War.

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In the Portuguese city of Serpa the 10th edition of the Documentary Seminar `Doc`s Kingdom` started on Wednesday 16 June. This years theme is focussing on the use of archival footage in documentaries. Filmmakers like Hartmut Bitomsky, Edgardo Cozarinsky and Susana de Sousa Dias will be present to debate about their own films. The Ivens Foundation is partner in this seminar.

Beyond the use of archival images, the notion of archive at the origin of the act of filming. Gathering filmmakers who have intensely worked with previously existent footage, and not forgetting that side of their activity, we propose the analysis of different paths which both enlarge and transform that binomial (image and archive). The idea of gathering, collection, inventory, as a return to an original state and, at the same time, as creative impulse. The archive, i.e., the (re)founding space.

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Bryan McCormack, When Joris Ivens meets Hraesvelgr`, Parc de Saint-Cloud Paris
Copyright artist.

On Saturday May 29 in Paris, the Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterrand, in the presence of first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will reveal a 12 meters high outdoor sculpture on Joris Ivens. The statue is the work of Irish artist Bryan McCormack.

The image is in particular a tribute to the film Pour le Mistral (1966) on the wind, a recurring theme in Ivens` work, from his earliest film in 1929 until his last filmUne Histoire de Vent (1988). The title of the artwork "When Joris Ivens meets Hraesvelgr" also refers to the wind giant from Norse mythology. In the top of the image is a classic picture of a naked man seen with a playful globe in his hand and two enormous moving wings on his back. The symbolism of the sculpture also seems to refere to the nickname of Ivens “The Flying Dutchman ", the mythical figure of the rebel ship`s captain who tart the winds and storms of all oceans and is doomed forever to sail.

This is the third major outdoor sculpture, based on the work of Ivens. In Nijmegen in 1990 at the Joris Ivens square an 8 meter-high sculpture by Bass Maters was placed. In 2007 at the Midi Station in Brussels, a large sculpture of Emilio Menchero-Lopez in the form of a public megaphone appeared. This new sculpture is placed in command of the Centre des monuments nationaux in the Park Saint Cloud, where the famous landscape gardener of Louis XIV, Andre Le Notre in the 17th century created the avenues, lakes and fountains. The artist Bryan Mc Cormack has attached the following text to the artwork:

"In Nordic mythology, the giant Hraesvelgr, half man, half bird sits at the edge of this world making the wind blow, all the winds are its children sent out across creation by the flapping of its wings. The Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens made over 80 films between 1912 to 1988 and in particular «For The Wind» (1965). This sculpture is the fruit of their symbolic «meeting». It speaks of wind «of air in movement» that is dispersed, that is reunited, that warms and cools, that invites travel. The sculpture, like the giant, is immobile. However, it is the wind that creates the movement in the trees surrounding it. The reunion of movement versus immobility exists, but in a context that is opposite to the legend. The artist Bryan Mc Cormack was born in Ireland in 1972."

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Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa that is held from 21 to 29 May is the festival for African cinema, this years focus is on the 50 years of independence celebrations in Africa. Demain a Nanguila Ivens film from 1960 about Mali `s independence was an important film and led the foundation of the Malian film art. For the occasion of this festival the European Foundation Joris Ivens scanned the film and the festival subtitles the film in Spanish

Nanguila Tomorow is a film about the independence of the Mali federation (Mali and Senegal), founded in april 1960, shown by telling the story of a boy, which returns to the city and to his family after having experienced turmoil and then becomes active in irrigating the fields.

For the complete program of the festival clck here

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DOC `S KINGDOM is the international seminar on documentary film from wich will take place in Serpa, Portugal from June 16 to 20. This year`s theme: is: The Archive-Image

Doc `s Kingdom, the international documentary seminar in Serpa, Portugal is always striving to have all the directors of the films present for public debates and panel discussions. Doc`s Kingdom 2010 will present several examples of footage films. The seminar will maintain distinctive elements, such as the promotion of contact between different generations of documentary filmmakers and documentary styles.

The European Foundation Joris Ivens is a partner of Doc `s Kingdom.
Visit the Doc `s Kingdom website (English) for the full program.