Joris Ivens | |
|---|---|
 Joris Ivens, circa 1971 | |
| Born | Georg Henri Anton Ivens (1898-11-18)18 November 1898 Nijmegen, Netherlands |
| Died | 28 June 1989(1989-06-28) (aged 90) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Documentary filmmaker |
| Spouse | Marceline Loridan-Ivens |
Georg Henri Anton "Joris"Ivens (18 November 1898 – 28 June 1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed areA Tale of the Wind,The Spanish Earth,Rain,...A Valparaiso,Misère au Borinage (Borinage),17th Parallel: Vietnam in War,The Seine Meets Paris,Far from Vietnam,Pour le Mistral andHow Yukong Moved the Mountains.
Born Georg Henri Anton Ivens[1] on 18 November 1898 atNijmegen, Netherlands,[2] 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. Under the direction of his father, he completed his first film at 13.[citation needed]
He studied first at the Rotterdam School of Economics (1916–17, 1920–21), before serving as afield artillery lieutenant in World War I. In 1922 and 1923 he studiedphotochemistry in Germany.[2]
Returning toAmsterdam in 1926, he joined the family business, but left around 1929 after his first two films were met with acclaim.[2]
Originally his work wasconstructivist in character, especially his shortcity symphoniesRain (Regen, 1929), which he directed together withMannus Franken, filmed over two years, andThe Bridge (De Brug, 1928). The latter was about a newly built elevator railway bridge in Rotterdam, shot in 1927, and shown in 1928 by theNederlandsche Filmliga (Netherlands Film League) (1927–1933).[3] This avant-garde cineclub, with its eponymous magazine, had just been established by Ivens,Menno ter Braak, and others, with branches in different Dutch cities.The Bridge was part of its first season of film screenings, and received critical acclaim. TheFilmliga drew various foreign filmmakers to the Netherlands, such asAlberto Cavalcanti,René Clair,Sergei Eisenstein,Vsevolod Pudovkin, andDziga Vertov, who also became Ivens' friends. Through these connections,The Bridge was widely shown abroad, including the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
In 1929, Ivens went to theSoviet Union after being invited to present a lecture there,[2] and due to the success ofThe Bridge, he was invited to direct a film on a topic of his own choosing, which was the new industrial city ofMagnitogorsk. Before commencing work, he returned to the Netherlands to makeIndustrial Symphony forPhilips Electric, which is considered to be a film of great technical beauty.[4]
He returned to the Soviet Union to make the film about Magnitogorsk,Song of Heroes in 1931 with music composed byHanns Eisler. This was the first film on which Ivens and Eisler worked together. It was a propaganda film about this new industrial city where masses of laborers and Communist youth worked forStalin'sFive Year Plan.[citation needed]
WithHenri Storck, Ivens madeMisère au Borinage (Borinage, 1933), a documentary on life in a coal mining region. In 1943, he also directed two Allied propaganda films for theNational Film Board of Canada, includingAction Stations, about theRoyal Canadian Navy's escorting of convoys in theBattle of the Atlantic.[5]
Ivens metErnest Hemingway andLudwig Renn during theSpanish Civil War in 1936.[citation needed]
From 1936 to 1945, Ivens was based in the United States. ForPare Lorentz'sU.S. Film Service, in the year 1940, he made a documentary film onrural electrification calledPower 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.[citation needed]
Ivens was, however, better known for his anti-fascist and otherpropaganda films, including the feature-length documentaryThe Spanish Earth (1937). This film was made for the SpanishRepublican cause, co-written withErnest Hemingway, with music byMarc Blitzstein andVirgil Thomson.Jean Renoir did the French narration for the film and Hemingway did the English version (afterOrson Welles' version had sounded too theatrical). This film was financed byArchibald 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 theContemporary Historians. The Spanish Earth was shown at theWhite House on 8 July 1937 after Ivens, Hemingway, andMartha Gellhorn had had dinner with PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt,Eleanor Roosevelt, andHarry Hopkins. The Roosevelts loved the film but said that it needed more propaganda.[citation needed] The film showed how the Republicans tried to hold on to freedoms which were threatened by theFalangists, and their attempts to reclaim farmland which had been neglected for decades byabsentee landlords. Ivens produced the film for less than $10,000. This documentary was considered his masterpiece.[1]
In 1938 he traveled to China.The 400 Million (1939) depicted the history of modern China and the Chinese resistance during theSecond Sino-Japanese War, including dramatic shots of theBattle of Taierzhuang.Robert Capa did camerawork,Sidney Lumet worked on the film as a reader,Hanns Eisler wrote the musical score, andFredric March provided the narration. It had been financed by the same people who had supportedSpanish Earth. Its chief fundraiser wasLuise Rainer, recipient of the best actressOscar two years in a row; and the entire group called themselves this time,History Today, Inc. TheKuomintang government censored the film, fearing that it would give too much credit to left-wing forces.[6] Ivens was also suspected of being a friend ofMao Zedong and especiallyZhou Enlai.[7]
In early 1943,Frank Capra hired Ivens to supervise the production ofKnow Your Enemy: Japan for his U.S. War Department film seriesWhy We Fight. The film's commentary was written largely byCarl Foreman. Capra fired Ivens from the project because he felt that his approach was too sympathetic toward the Japanese. The film's release was held up because there were concerns thatEmperor Hirohito was being depicted as a war criminal, and there was a policy shift to portray the Emperor more favorably after the war[dubious –discuss] as a means of maintaining order in post-war Japan.
With the emerging "Red Scare" of the late 1940s, Ivens was forced to leave the country in the early months of theTruman administration. Ivens's leftist politics also put a stop to his first feature film project, which was to have starredGreta Garbo.Walter Wanger, the film's producer, was adamant about "running [Ivens] out of town."[citation needed]
In 1946, commissioned to make a Dutch film aboutIndonesian independence, Ivens resigned in protest over what he considered ongoingimperialism; the Dutch were in his view resisting decolonization. Instead, Ivens filmedIndonesia Calling in secret, for which he received funding from theInternational Workers Order.[8]
For around a decade Ivens lived inEastern Europe, working for several studios there.[citation needed]
Having been criticized in the Netherlands, the tides were turning in the 1960s. In 1965, the city ofRotterdam commissioned him to make a film about the port, which was meant to be a promotional film, but Ivens gotcarte blanche. The result, the essay-filmRotterdam Europoort (1966), is not only critical of modern city planning and consumerism, but also an autobiographical tale inspired by the legend of theFlying Dutchman. Ivens was very happy with the result and even believed that it was his best film.[9]
At about the same time, from 1965 to 1970, Ivens also worked on two documentary films aboutNorth Vietnam during the war; he made17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple(17th Parallel: Vietnam in War) and he participated in the collective workLoin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam).[citation needed]
From 1971 to 1977, he shotHow Yukong Moved the Mountains, a 763-minute documentary about theCultural Revolution in China.[10]
Shortly before his death in 1989, Ivens released the last of more than 40 films:Une histoire de vent (A Tale of the Wind).[citation needed]
Ivens was awarded theLenin Peace Prize for the year 1967.[citation needed]
In 1988 he received theGolden Lion Honorary Award at theVenice Film Festival.[11]
He received theOrder of the Netherlands Lion in January 1989.[citation needed]
Ivens met photographerGermaine Krull in Berlin in 1923, and entered into amarriage 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."[12]
Ivens later married French filmmaker and writerMarceline Loridan.[13] They had no children.[1]
On 7 June 1989 Ivens spoke toRadio Netherlands about his life and work in a wide-ranging interview.[14]
He died on 28 June 1989.[1] He was buried at theCimetière du Montparnasse inParis.[citation needed]
TheJoris Ivens Award was awarded at theInternational Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam from 1988,[15] before being renamed the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary between 2006[16] and 2009.[17][18] It was presented annually until 2020, when the category was split.[19]
As of 2025[update] thePrix du premier film Loridan-Ivens (First Film Loridan-Ivens Award) is awarded each year at theCinéma du Réel film festival. The Loridan-Ivens Award was initiated by Loridan-Ivens to support emerging committed filmmakers "casting a sharp eye on the state of the world". It is given in honour of her husband Joris Ivens, who was an early supporter Cinéma du Réel.[20][21] The prize was formerly known as the Joris Ivens Prize for a Young Filmmaker, or just Joris Ivens Award.[22]
A statue of Ivens by sculptorBryan McCormack was erected inParc de Saint-Cloud in Paris in 2010.[23]
The Joris Ivens European Foundation (Europese Stichting Joris Ivens) includes an archive of Ivens' work, as well as other features relating to him.[24]
...in the Joris Ivens, Silver Wolf and Silver Cub competitions-went to Danish films.
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