Joris Ivens: twentieth century documentarist

The twentieth century is characterized as a century in movement. In all kinds of fields this movement has been extraordinary in this yet short period. Besides the many wars, among which two world wars, the twentieth century also experienced a turbulent development in the political and technological arena. The industrialisation which was set into motion in the 19th century resulted some decades later in globalisation of activities: the rise of multi-nationals, greater mobility and migration of people and an ever increasing technology. Politics became a crossing of the border and new polarisation put a stamp on a large part of the 20th century. National revolutions had big consequences for the rest of the world.

Even before the beginning of this eventful century, in a period of relative rest, George Henri Anton Ivens was born in Nijmegen on the 18 November 1898. The second son of the catholic family of Kees Ivens and Dora Muskens he enjoyed a protected but liberal education. The Ivens family was a progressive one, both in the city of Nijmegen as in the Kees Ivens`s trade: photography. The latest technical developments in the field of photography were to be found in the CAPI-shop (CAPI being Cornelis Adrianus Peter Ivens`s initials). Thus the cinematograph. It is therefore not surprising that son Joris (then still called George) at an early age got into contact with the medium film. At his thirteenth he already made his first film De Wigwam, a story on Indians in which the whole family participates. For the time being Joris did not think of a career as film- maker; a job was in store for him in his father`s growing and prospering photo business, and for this purpose he followed the necessary training: economy at the Commercial College in Rotterdam and photo technology in Berlin, as well as some apprenticeships with Ica, Zeiss and Erneman.

In Berlin Joris Ivens met vanguard photographer Germaine Krull, the experimental film climate and the left-wing revolutionary movements. In the twenties Berlin was the cultural and political Mecca for the left-wing avant-garde. Germaine Krull involved Joris Ivens in it, if only that he was affected by the socialist ideas rather than by his friend`s anarchism. In the cinemas they saw the German expressionist films and the avant-garde experiments of e.g. Walter Ruttmann. Both these cultural and political experiences Joris Ivens took with him to the Netherlands where he first worked as head of the technical department and later as vice-president of the CAPI branch in Amsterdam.

So far little had pointed at Joris Ivens becoming a filmmaker. It is true in the twenties he had already made some short family films, but in a family of a photographic supplier where all the equipment was available this is not surprising. This did not change until 1927 when also in Amsterdam a movement came into being to see more art films. In May of that year the Film League was established, in which Joris Ivens played an important role as technical leader in inviting guests like Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Dulac, Cavalcanti and bringing in films. In the same year he began his first filmic experiments, shooting spontaniously with a handheld camera. Ivens’film start as an amateur was defined not only by documentary, but also by feauture film projects, trying to renew film language of both fiction and non-fiction film. All ingredients of his later films were tested in these first years of experiment: science films, social reportage, poetic nature recordings, subjective films, film skteches, political pamphlet, publicity films, home-movies, feature film (even surrealistic), animated film, news reels as well as aesthetic form and movement studies with abstract images.

In particular a meeting with Walter Ruttmann and his film Berlin, Symphonie einer Grosstadt stimulated him to making serious film plans. Early 1928 Joris Ivens begins filming The Bridge. After its first performance the film is received with loud acclaim and marked as an avant-garde masterpiece. Less and less time did Joris Ivens spend on his work for the CAPI enterprise and he got more and more involved in filming, and certainly after making Rain his reputation as filmmaker was established. In contrast to this cine-poem Poor Drenthe (1929) is the first documentary by Joris Ivens showing his involvement with the laborers, followed by an assignment of the General Netherlands Construction Workers Union to make a series of films presenting the skills and solidarity of these workers.

Ivens’ eagerness to adept to new pioneering technology is shown in Philips Radio, the first Dutch sound film ever. This belief in technological progress is combined with the socialist utopia in the film Song of Heroes (Pesn O Gerojach, 1932). Co-operating with among others Hanns Eisler, who produced the sound track of the film, he made a film about the building up of the socialist Soviet-state on the basis of the construction of the blast furnace town of Magnitogorsk by the Komsomol youth. In a filmic way this film  integrates his previous experiments, using fictional elements, re-enactment and a personalized approach.

The ever tensed political context of the 1930’s accumulated in a classic social documentary Borinage, when Ivens was asked by Henri Storck in 1934 to collaborate on a film about the miners` strike and the abominable way of living of the laborers in the Borinage, a coal region in Belgium near the French border. His social and political engagement appears the same year from the treatment of Zuiderzee, which together with a newly added final act and the title New Earth was given an explicitly political message. After a following stay in the Soviet Union Joris Ivens left for the United States in 1936 where, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Contemporary Historians Inc. was established to enable the production of what was later to become The Spanish Earth (1937). Recorded at the republican front in Spain this film is still seen as one of Ivens`s most important films, characterized by powerful photography, editing, sober commentary by Ernest Hemingway and clear partiality against Franco`s fascism. Confrontations with uncontrollable war situations made him become aware that documentary needs a personal authorship integrating uncontrollable reality. A year later Ivens filmed the Chinese-Japanese War (The 400 Million), to subsequently make a number of films in the United States themselves.

In this relatively short period in his film career Joris Ivens had already put a clear mark on the documentary film and since that time he is generally regarded as one of the designers of this `movement`, as the documentarists called it themselves. Besides Ivens having co-developed the language of the documentary, he continued to devote this medium for his ideals and the progress of society and against the repression of the weaker groups in society. He was not always thanked for it and it defined for a part the future of his career and his special relation with the Netherlands. In spite of his communist sympathies Joris Ivens was appointed by the Dutch government to film the liberation of Indonesia as Film Commissioner for the Dutch East Indies. However, in Ivens`s opinion the Netherlands were not occupied with the liberation of Indonesia, but with re-colonising this country. He considered this a breach of contract from the side of the Dutch and resigned his function, and went on to make a filmic pamphlet against the Dutch policy with reference to Indonesia. Indonesia Calling (1946) meant a breach with the Netherlands: Ivens was considered persona non grata. This did not hamper his filmic work, however. He had already filmed in various corners of the world and was now given the assignment from Eastern Europe to film the reconstruction of the countries stricken by the Second World War, which were now on the brink of a socialist future (The First Years, 1949). Till 1957 Joris Ivens continued to work in East Germany, made one of his largest productions in the history of the documentary film, shot by 28 cameramen worldwide (Das Lied der Ströme, 1954), anticipating the era of television and satelites. The films of this period were predominantly characterized by propaganda for communism, and less by his artistic qualities; also because he was given less freedom to develop it.

In 1957 Joris Ivens returned to Western Europe and made the poetic La Seine a rencontré Paris in France. This, however, did not mean a turning away from his political and social engagement, for his films that follow are characterized by the alternation or synthesis of poetry and politics, of free productions and commissioned films, on every continent. In 1958 he made, apart from his work as lecturer at the Being film academy, both the poetic Before spring and the political pamphlet 600 Million With You. After a commissioned film for the Italian state oil company ENI (L`Italia non e un paese povero, 1960) he travelled to Mali and founded national filmculture by making Demain a Nanguila. Capturing the revolutionary atmosphere on Cuba in 1961 with Pueblo armado and a filmic travel letter to Charles Chaplin: Carnet de Viaje  was followed by special film poems: ...A Valparaiso (Chili, 1963) and Pour le Mistral (France, 1965).

The sixties are further more characterized by adepting to new film equipment and technology like direct sound recording and light camera’s, resulting in a series of films about the liberation of Vietnam (such as Le 17ème parallèle from 1967, which he shot with Marceline Loridan). From this period his co-operation with Marceline Loridan began, which continued untill his death in 1989. This co-operation resulted among others in the monumental series lasting twelve hours Comment Yukong deplaça les montagne (1976), about the influence of the Cultural Revolution on everyday life in China. Together they co-directed Ivens’film testament, the poetic, contemplative, sometimes ironic Une histoire de vent (1988). A highly praised pinnacle of his imposing oeuvre in which Ivens reflects in retrospective on his film career and the turbulent twentieth century.