After last years agreement between the Vietnamese Film Instituut and the European Foundation Joris Ivens to establish an active partnership director André Stufkens visited Vietnam on the invitation of director Vũ Nguyên Hùng. The purpose of the successful visit was to make concrete appointments further developing this collaboration of exchange of knowledge and expertise.
Read more: Ivens Foundation visits Vietnam Film Institute creating a partnership
On March 28th, during the 2017 annual meeting of The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), the Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award for outstanding scholarship in cinema and media studies will be presented to prof. Thomas Waugh for his magisterial The Conscience of Cinema. The Works of Joris Ivens, 1912-1989. It is thé ultimate peer review recognition of the intellectual quality and vibrance of this first book about the complete film oeuvre of Joris Ivens.
Read more: Prestigious Award Thomas Waughs' book on Joris Ivens
Mark Hamlyn made a new composition for The Billi Brass Quintet for Ivens' 'the Bridge'. It is part of the Billi Brass' Silent Films Project.
Read more: Another experimental composition for 'The Bridge'
In the series 'Stationen der Filmgeschichte' (Stations of Film History) the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf presents films of 100 Master film directors who influenced film history. Stations are sites of arrivals, departures, crossings and switches, similar to icons of film history: the selected film directors paved the way of new directions, cross overs and switches in filmmaking. On 3 January the Filmmuseum presents three films of Joris Ivens: Lied der Ströme (1954, Song of the Rivers), ...à Valparaiso (1963) and Regen (1929, Rain).
‘A new Ivens’, this is how German film historian Günter Jordan describes the documentary The Compass Rose (Die Wndrose, 1957). With an outstanding cast, like Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Helene Weigel, with outstanding directors like Alberto Cavalcanti, Yannick Bellon and Gilio Pontecorvo, this five-episode omnibus film presented a new style and format in documentary film. It was shown during the International Documentary Festival DOKS Leipzig celebrating its 70th anniversary on 3 November.
During the UBUD Writers festival on Bali the 'Black Armada/Hitam Armada' exhibition was presented at the Agung Rai Museum of Art. Dr. Helena Studdert, consul-general of Australia on Bali, attended the opening event. This travelling exhibition, with the permanent screening of Ivens' Indonesia Calling, made by the National Maritime Museum of Australia on the initiative of Mr. Anthony Liem was already shown in Sydney and Yogyakarta. It will be shown at the end of November at the Margarana National Park to commemorate the 70th anniversay of the death of national hero Ngurah Rai.
On Friday prof. Thomas Waugh (Concordia University, Montreal) presented his monumental 'The Conscience of Cinema. The Works of Joris Ivens 1912-1989' in EYE Amsterdam. Together with Amsterdam University Press and the European Foundation Joris Ivens, EYE organized an expertmeeting, two filmscreenings of six Ivensfilms and a live music performance accompanying Rain (Regen, 1929, Ivens/Franken). This marked the launch of a book that for the first time surveys all the films of Ivens, with a description, analysis and many new insights. It is an eloquent, evocative, intelligent and passionate book.
Of late, there has been a growing interest in The Netherlands to re-examine the decolonisation of Indonesia (1945-1949), particularly the military conflict between the two countries. This seminar in Leiden, organized by Ariel Heryanto, professor at the School Culture, History and Language (The Australian National University) is called ‘Decolonializing Indonesia: The Left and Indonesia Calling’. The paper offers a preliminary analysis of the conflict and its cultural and political dimensions within a broader regional context, including Australia, The Netherlands and Indonesia. At the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies