Joris Ivens
Encyclopedia
Joris Ivens was a Dutch documentary film
maker and committed communist.
in Berlin in 1923, and entered into a marriage of convenience
with her between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."
Originally his work focused on technique - some argue that it had that focus at the cost of relevance, especially in Rain
(Regen, 1929), a 10-minute short filmed over 2 years which features impressive cinematography and a number of 'characters' but no information about them aside from what was visible, and in The Bridge
(De Brug, 1928), which showed a frank admiration of engineering and also featured a number of "characters" but again did not give any information about them. Around this time he was involved in the creation of the Filmliga based in Amsterdam which drew foreign filmmakers to Holland such as Alberto Cavalcanti
, René Clair
, Sergei Eisenstein
, Vsevolod Pudovkin
, and Dziga Vertov
who also became his friends.
In 1929, Ivens went to the Soviet Union and, to his astonishment, was invited to direct a film on a topic of his own choosing which was the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk
. Before commencing work, he returned to the Netherlands to make Industrial Symphony for Philips Electric which is considered to be a film of great technical beauty. He returned to the Soviet Union to make the film about Magnitogorsk, Song of Heroes in 1931. It was a propaganda film about this new industrial city which was mainly built by forced labourers, who however were portrayed by Ivens as communist volunteers. Ivens later referred to these forced labourers as "weed".
With Henri Storck
, Ivens made Misère au Borinage
(Borinage, 1933), a moving and militant documentary on life in a coal mining region. In 1943, he also directed two Allied propaganda films for the National Film Board of Canada
.http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/resultat.php?type=fonction&idFcr=7845&idFct=01&nom=Joris+Ivens&nomfunc=Director
's U.S. Film Service, in the year 1940, he made a poetic documentary film on rural electrification called Power and the Land. It focused on a family, the Parkinsons, who ran a business providing milk for their community. The film showed the problem in the lack of electricity and the way the problem was fixed. Ivens was, however, known for his anti-fascist
and other propaganda film
s, including The Spanish Earth
, for the Spanish loyalists, co-written with Ernest Hemingway
and music by Marc Blitzstein
and Virgil Thomson
. Jean Renoir
did the French narration for the film and Hemingway did the English version only after Orson Welles
's sounded too theatrical.. This film was financed by Archibald MacLeish
, Fredric March
, Florence Eldridge
, Lillian Hellman
, Luise Rainer
, Dudley Nichols
, Franchot Tone
and other Hollywood movie stars, moguls, and writers who composed a group known as the Contemporary Historians. Spanish Earth was shown at the White House
on July 8, 1937 after Ivens, Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn
, had had dinner with President Franklin D. Roosevelt
, Eleanor Roosevelt
and Harry Hopkins
. The Roosevelts loved the film but said that it needed more propaganda. This 1937 documentary was considered his masterpiece.
In 1938 he traveled to China. The 400 Million (1939) depicted the history of modern China and the resistance to the Japanese invasion, including dramatic shots of the Battle of Taierzhuang
. Robert Capa
did camerawork, Sidney Lumet
worked on the film as a reader, Hanns Eisler
wrote the musical score, and Fredric March
provided the narration. It, too, had been financed by the same people as those of Spanish Earth. Its chief fundraiser was Luise Rainer
, recipient of the best actress Oscar two years in a row; and the entire group called themselves this time, History Today, Inc . The Guomindang government censored the film, fearing that it would give too much credit to left-wing forces. Iven was also suspected of being a friend of Mao Zedong
and especially Zhou Enlai
.
In 1944, Ivens made Know Your Enemy: Japan for Frank Capra
's U.S. War Department film series Why We Fight. The film's commentary was written largely by Carl Foreman
. It was never distributed because Emperor Hirohito had been depicted and labeled as a war criminal; and as the film was due for release there had been an American government policy shift to keep the Emperor after the war as a means of maintaining order in post-war Japan. A combination of not being in step with the Truman Administration and owing to the emerging 'red scare' on known or suspected Communists by the US government after Roosevelt's death made Ivens leave the United States. Ivens' politics also put the kibosh on his first feature film project which was to have starred Greta Garbo
. In fact, Walter Wanger
, the producer, was adamant about "running him {Ivens} out of town {Hollywood}."
In 1946, commissioned to make a Dutch film about Indonesian 'independence', Ivens resigned out of protest of what he considered ongoing imperialism
, the Dutch were resisting decolonization, and filmed Indonesia Calling
in secret. For around a decade Ivens lived in Eastern Europe, working for several studios there. His position concerning Indonesia and his taking sides for the Eastern Bloc
in the Cold War
annoyed the Dutch government. Over a period of many years, he was obliged to renew his passport every three or four months. According to later mythology however, he lost his passport for ten years, which is not true - the fact that he would make it back to New York City to sit by the bedside of his old friend Paul Robeson
when he was ill would belie that.
From 1965 to 1970 he filmed life in North Vietnam during the war: 17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple (17th Parallel: Vietnam in War) and participated in the collective work Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam). He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize
for the year 1967.
From 1971 to 1977, he shot How Yukong Moved the Mountains
, a 763-minute documentary about the Cultural Revolution
in China. He was given unprecedented access because of his old personal friendships with Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao.
Ivens was knighted by the Dutch government in 1989, and died on 28 June that year. Shortly before his death he made the last of more than 40 films Une histoire de vent (A Tale of the Wind).
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
maker and committed communist.
Early life and career
Born Georg Henri Anton Ivens into a wealthy family, Ivens went to work in one of his father's photo supply shops and from there developed an interest in film. He completed his first film at 13; in college he studied economics with the goal of continuing his father's business, but an interest in class issues distracted him from that path. He met photographer Germaine KrullGermaine Krull
Germaine Krull , was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner. Her nationality has been categorized as German, Polish, French, and Dutch, but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India...
in Berlin in 1923, and entered into a marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
with her between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."
Originally his work focused on technique - some argue that it had that focus at the cost of relevance, especially in Rain
Rain (1929 film)
Rain is a 1929 Dutch short documentary film directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens....
(Regen, 1929), a 10-minute short filmed over 2 years which features impressive cinematography and a number of 'characters' but no information about them aside from what was visible, and in The Bridge
De brug
De brug is a 1928 Dutch documentary short film directed by Joris Ivens. This silent film explores the newly constructed Rotterdam vertical-lift railroad bridge: its structure, mechanisms, complex actions, and the steam-powered trains and ships making use of it.- Synopsis :Three views of the film...
(De Brug, 1928), which showed a frank admiration of engineering and also featured a number of "characters" but again did not give any information about them. Around this time he was involved in the creation of the Filmliga based in Amsterdam which drew foreign filmmakers to Holland such as Alberto Cavalcanti
Alberto Cavalcanti
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer.-Early life:Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a...
, René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
, Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
, and Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
who also became his friends.
In 1929, Ivens went to the Soviet Union and, to his astonishment, was invited to direct a film on a topic of his own choosing which was the new industrial city of Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk is a mining and industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Population: 418,545 ;...
. Before commencing work, he returned to the Netherlands to make Industrial Symphony for Philips Electric which is considered to be a film of great technical beauty. He returned to the Soviet Union to make the film about Magnitogorsk, Song of Heroes in 1931. It was a propaganda film about this new industrial city which was mainly built by forced labourers, who however were portrayed by Ivens as communist volunteers. Ivens later referred to these forced labourers as "weed".
With Henri Storck
Henri Storck
Henri Storck was a Belgian author, film-maker and documentarist.In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, Misère au Borinage, a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with Andre Thirifays and Pierre Vermeylen, he founded the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique...
, Ivens made Misère au Borinage
Misère au Borinage
Misère au Borinage is a 1933 Belgian documentary film directed by Henri Storck and Joris Ivens.The film opens with these words: Crisis in the Capitalist World. Factories are closed down, abandoned...
(Borinage, 1933), a moving and militant documentary on life in a coal mining region. In 1943, he also directed two Allied propaganda films for the National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
.http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/resultat.php?type=fonction&idFcr=7845&idFct=01&nom=Joris+Ivens&nomfunc=Director
U.S. and post-World War II career
From 1936 to 1945, Ivens was based in the United States. For Pare LorentzPare Lorentz
Pare Lorentz was an American filmmaker known for his movies about the New Deal. Born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in Clarksburg, West Virginia, he was educated at Wesleyan College and West Virginia University. As a young film critic in New York and Hollywood, Lorentz spoke out against censorship in...
's U.S. Film Service, in the year 1940, he made a poetic documentary film on rural electrification called Power and the Land. It focused on a family, the Parkinsons, who ran a business providing milk for their community. The film showed the problem in the lack of electricity and the way the problem was fixed. Ivens was, however, known for his anti-fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and other propaganda film
Propaganda film
The term propaganda can be defined as the ability to produce and spread fertile messages that, once sown, will germinate in large human cultures.” However, in the 20th century, a “new” propaganda emerged, which revolved around political organizations and their need to communicate messages that...
s, including The Spanish Earth
The Spanish Earth
The Spanish Earth was a propaganda film made during the Spanish Civil War in favor of the democratically elected Republicans ....
, for the Spanish loyalists, co-written with Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
and music by Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
and Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
. Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
did the French narration for the film and Hemingway did the English version only after Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
's sounded too theatrical.. This film was financed by Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
, Fredric March
Fredric March
Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...
, Florence Eldridge
Florence Eldridge
Florence Eldridge was an American actress.-Personal life:...
, Lillian Hellman
Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...
, Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer is a former German film actress. Known as The "Viennese Teardrop", she was the first woman to win two Academy Awards, and the first person to win them consecutively. She was discovered by MGM talent scouts while acting on stage in Austria and Germany and after appearing in Austrian...
, Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols
Dudley Nichols was an American screenwriter who first came to prominence after winning and refusing the screenwriting Oscar for The Informer in 1936....
, Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone
Franchot Tone was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty and many other films through the 1960s...
and other Hollywood movie stars, moguls, and writers who composed a group known as the Contemporary Historians. Spanish Earth was shown at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
on July 8, 1937 after Ivens, Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, considered by The London Daily Telegraph amongst others to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career...
, had had dinner with President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
and Harry Hopkins
Harry Hopkins
Harry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...
. The Roosevelts loved the film but said that it needed more propaganda. This 1937 documentary was considered his masterpiece.
In 1938 he traveled to China. The 400 Million (1939) depicted the history of modern China and the resistance to the Japanese invasion, including dramatic shots of the Battle of Taierzhuang
Battle of Taierzhuang
The Battle of Tai'erzhuang was a battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938, between armies of Chinese Kuomintang and Japan, and is sometimes considered as a part of Battle of Xuzhou....
. Robert Capa
Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...
did camerawork, Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
worked on the film as a reader, Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
wrote the musical score, and Fredric March
Fredric March
Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...
provided the narration. It, too, had been financed by the same people as those of Spanish Earth. Its chief fundraiser was Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer
Luise Rainer is a former German film actress. Known as The "Viennese Teardrop", she was the first woman to win two Academy Awards, and the first person to win them consecutively. She was discovered by MGM talent scouts while acting on stage in Austria and Germany and after appearing in Austrian...
, recipient of the best actress Oscar two years in a row; and the entire group called themselves this time, History Today, Inc . The Guomindang government censored the film, fearing that it would give too much credit to left-wing forces. Iven was also suspected of being a friend of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and especially Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
.
In 1944, Ivens made Know Your Enemy: Japan for Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
's U.S. War Department film series Why We Fight. The film's commentary was written largely by Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the notable film High Noon. He was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Biography:...
. It was never distributed because Emperor Hirohito had been depicted and labeled as a war criminal; and as the film was due for release there had been an American government policy shift to keep the Emperor after the war as a means of maintaining order in post-war Japan. A combination of not being in step with the Truman Administration and owing to the emerging 'red scare' on known or suspected Communists by the US government after Roosevelt's death made Ivens leave the United States. Ivens' politics also put the kibosh on his first feature film project which was to have starred Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
. In fact, Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger was an American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a...
, the producer, was adamant about "running him {Ivens} out of town {Hollywood}."
In 1946, commissioned to make a Dutch film about Indonesian 'independence', Ivens resigned out of protest of what he considered ongoing imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, the Dutch were resisting decolonization, and filmed Indonesia Calling
Indonesia Calling
Indonesia Calling is a 1946 Australian short documentary film directed by Joris Ivens and produced by the then Waterside Workers' Federation...
in secret. For around a decade Ivens lived in Eastern Europe, working for several studios there. His position concerning Indonesia and his taking sides for the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
annoyed the Dutch government. Over a period of many years, he was obliged to renew his passport every three or four months. According to later mythology however, he lost his passport for ten years, which is not true - the fact that he would make it back to New York City to sit by the bedside of his old friend Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
when he was ill would belie that.
From 1965 to 1970 he filmed life in North Vietnam during the war: 17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple (17th Parallel: Vietnam in War) and participated in the collective work Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam). He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize
Lenin Peace Prize
The International Lenin Peace Prize was the Soviet Union's equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize, named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a panel appointed by the Soviet government, to notable individuals whom the panel indicated had "strengthened peace among peoples"...
for the year 1967.
From 1971 to 1977, he shot How Yukong Moved the Mountains
How Yukong Moved the Mountains
How Yukong Moved the Mountains is a 1976 French documentary film directed by Joris Ivens, about the last days of the Cultural Revolution. At 763 min it is one of the longest films by running time....
, a 763-minute documentary about the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
in China. He was given unprecedented access because of his old personal friendships with Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao.
Ivens was knighted by the Dutch government in 1989, and died on 28 June that year. Shortly before his death he made the last of more than 40 films Une histoire de vent (A Tale of the Wind).
Further reading
- A. Zalzman, Joris Ivens, Seghers, Paris, 1963.
- Joris Ivens, The Camera and I, International Publishers, New York, 1969.
- Rosalind Delmar, Joris Ivens: 50 Years of Film-Making, Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute, London, 1979. ISBN 08-5170-092-6
- Carlos Böker, Joris Ivens, Film-Maker: Facing Reality, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1981. ISBN 08-3571-182-X
- Joris Ivens and China, New World Press, Beijing, 1983. ISBN 08-3511-088-5
- Kees Bakker (ed.), Joris Ivens and the Documentary Context, paperback edition, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2000. ISBN 90-5356-425-X
- Hans Schoots, Living Dangerously: A Biography of Joris Ivens, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2000. ISBN 90-535-6433-0
- Virgilio TosiVirgilio TosiVirgilio Tosi is an Italian documentary filmmaker and historian of early film.- Early life :On June 10, 1940, the day Italy entered World War II, Tosi started working as apprentice invoice-clerk at the Milan seat of a German firm dealing in steel products, while pursuing his studies in his spare...
, Joris Ivens: Cinema e Utopia, Bulzoni, Rome, 2002. ISBN 88-8319-745-3
External links
- European Foundation Joris Ivens
- Biographer Hans Schoots on Ivens
- Sensesofcinema.com biography
- Joris Ivens films on UbuWeb: Rain (Regen) and The Bridge (De Brug)