HANS WEGNER COLLECTION
As producer of the East German DEFA Studio Hans Wegner closely co-operated with Joris Ivens on the film The Song of Rivers (1954). Shostakovich wrote the music, Bertholt Brecht the lyrics, Picasso drew the cover of the photo album and Laul Robeson and Ernst Busch sang the songs. It was a mega project, in which Ivens and Wegner, from an office in Berlin, instructed dozens of workers alongside the banks of the six rivers Wolga , Missisippi, Nile, Yangtze, Amazon and Ganges about the shooting that was to record the march of the communist labour movement. Pozner, the scriptwriter of this film, wrote in 1957 that no less than half a billion people had seen the film. From this co-operation between Ivens and Wegner developed a close friendship. Wegner collected material for a doctoral thesis and a biography. In 1963 he co-operated with Wolfgang Klaus on a festschrift and in 1965 he published the biography. The collection of the conscienciously working Wegner expanded into the largest collection besides the Joris Ivens Archives. Negotiations for a transfer of the documents started halfway the sixties. After Wegner's death Anneliese Wegner sold the collection to the Staatlichen Filmarchiv in 1988. As a result of the dedication of Karl Griep, the director of the Filmarchiv, (nowadays part of the Bundesarchiv) the material has been deposited with the European Foundation Joris Ivens and 30 years of negotiations have successfully been concluded for both parties. Among the documents are many scenarios, film scripts, and shotlists from the oldest films: Breaker, Rain, and Philips Radio, up to the Vietnam films. A lot of material deals with the period in the Eastern bloc accentuating the DEFA films The Song of Rivers, Tijl Uilenspiegel, and The Windrose. Clippings from 1929, many lectures and essays, correspondence from 1936 till 1955, passports, medals and books form a significant acquisition for the Archives, just as the film material consisting of thousands of photographs and negatives (from 1927).
Ewa (Maria) Fiszer donated those documents to the Foundation which Joris Ivens had left with her in the early sixties. Ivens met Ewa Fiszer in 1950 and he was married to her the year after. She is a poet and in 1949 she published her first volume of poetry about her war experiences in Warsaw during the German occupation. As a student she joined teh resistance and as a courier she was actively involved in the Warsaw rebellion in 1944. Besides her own poetic work Fiszer translated work by among others Sylvia Plath, the Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet, Paul Eluard, Jacques Prévert and the Nigerian Nobel prize winner Vale Sayinha.
Ewa Fiszer had already given up material to the Joris Ivens Archives in the sixties. The records which she has donated now deal exclusively with the American perod of Ivens (1939-1944). All the films and film plans dating from that time are in it. For example the correspondence between Ivens and Greta Garbo about the film Woman of the Sea (which was never made). But also the scenarios, scripts, shotlists, clippings, and reviews of Our Russian Front, Power and the Land, Action Stations, Oil for Alladin's Lamp and The 400 Million. Furthermore there is material about Ivensinvolvement in the jury of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Science for the Academy Award ceremony in the category documentary.
The American photographer Marion Michelle - the camera woman of Indonesia Calling! and scriptwriter of The First Years deposited half of her papers with the Foundation last year. Now she has also deposited all her photographs relating to Ivens. We are talking about hundreds of prints, among which many original prints (vintage prints) covering the period 1944 - 1989. Most photographs are about her co-operation with Ivens in Australia (1945-46), in Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia during the shooting of The First Years, the journey to Italy (1951) and the stay in Paris (1947-1989). In September her Mexican Photographs were exhibited in New York (together with the work of Paul Strand), in November her Joris Ivens photographs will be shown in the townhall of Nijmegen.
In the Collection Marion Michelle Eddie Allison's documents have been included. Eddie Allison worked in Sidney for the New Theatre and as a producer he took care of the distribution of Indonesia Calling! for Australasia. From the correspondence between Ivens and Allison it becomes clear how from a distance - Ivens had retired into the Blue Mountains because of serious asthma attacks - nevertheless he finished the film.
Jan de Vaal got in touch with Joris Ivens through his work as director of the Netherlands Film Museum. Shortly after the war the predecessor of the NFM: the Netherlands Historic Film Archives were founded and the 22-year-old De Vaal was appointed director in 1947. He was to lead these archives for 40 years and built up a unique collection of Dutch and international films from scratch. His first task was to show The 400 Million in a bombarded Nijmegen. With the help of Willem Sandberg, then chairman of the Film Museum, the film archives were established in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It was there, not surprisingly, that in 1964 the reconcilliation between Ivens and the Netherlands took place during a press conference which Jan de Vaal had convened. In that year Ivens officially founded the Joris Ivens Archives, which was housed in the NFM in Jan de Vaal's trust. With it he laid the basis for both the most complete film collection of Ivens and the paper collection of the present-day Ivens Archives. Tineke de Vaal became co-ordinator of the Ivens Archives in the seventies and eighties and co-operated in numerous events and exhibitions about Ivens, as in the travelling exhibition Joris Ivens-renowned film maker, which was shown in 11 countries. Nowadays Tineke de Vaal is actively involved in acquisition for the Foundation. They have deposited their personal papers in Nijmegen and they consist of among other things 200 personal letters and postcards from Ivens, business correspondence about film performances and activities. This collection is also important because it outlines the development of the archives.
Last year Marceline Loridan-Ivens started depositing material of her own from Paris in Nijmegen. New acqusitions are a lot of newspaper articles dating from the period 1982 - 1990 and documentary material for the film Une Histoire de Vent. Research on the spot by Chinese friends, photographs, articles and magazines supplied material for finding suitable locations, temples and landscapes where the role of the wind is visible in the wide China landscape. She has also donated a collection of photographs from the film.
This year Marceline Loridan-Ivens visits the many festivals which have been and will be organised as part of the centenary as the our principal guest. Of these festivals she will donate the catalogues and programmes to the Archives.
Bob Haan, nephew by marriage of Joris Ivens, has started making an inventory of the Nooteboom-Ivens family papers. They contain material belonging to Ivens' sister Thea Nooteboom-Ivens, deceased last year, her son Urias Nooteboom and others. Josien Nooteboom and Bob Haan have collected the family papers and the collection will be deposited in Nijmegen as a separate collection after the completion of the inventory. In Nijmegen are already the archives of father Cees Ivens and brother Hans Ivens.
From Stefano Missio we received a 16 mm print of the documentary Quando l'Italia non era un paese povero; on his website you can find more information concerning this film. From the Wereldomroep the video tape of the documentary that the Guan Dong studio made of Joris Ivens and the Chinese Film Archives donated some seven or eight film books relating to Joris Ivens.
