Politics & Poetry

THE GAMELAN DIGUL of INDONESIA CALLING

Anthony Liem wrote a text about the history of the Gamelan Digul, the first gamelan in Australia, which is an important historical object illustrating the fight for Indonesian independance against Dutch colonial rule. This gamelan is at display at the Monash University, Performing Arts Centre in Melbourne in the Margaret Kartomi Gallery.

Andries Deinum and a find of The Camera and I

After some 80 years after it was written by Ivens, a bound typoscript of his first autobiography The Camera and I, was found in Portland, Oregon, USA. Ella Thomas, who is for 32 years Director of Education for the Northwest Film Center, the Northwest region's largest and most comprehensive film arts organization, writes how she found it:

Oscar Winning '20 Days in Mariupol' (2023) and Ivens's '40 Days in Madrid' (1937)

When watching Mstyslav Chernov’s Oscar-winning film 20 Days in Mariupol, Alex Vernon, professor in English and specialist in 20th century war-literature, could not but see parallels with The Spanish Earth. This documentary by Joris Ivens, John Fernhout and Ernest Hemingway was the result of 40 days of film shooting in besieged Madrid in 1937. Both films draws on personal footage with an harrowing account of civilians caught in the siege, in 1936 a new kind of warfare.

European Film Academy honors Ivens and Liftbridge as Treasure of European Film Culture

The European Film Academy (EFA) honors Joris Ivens, The Bridge (1928) and the vertical-lift bridge in Rotterdam (Koningshaven Bridge) by including it as Treasures of European Film Culture. It is for the first time that a Dutch filmmaker and location is included in this growing list of in the meanwhile 49 European locations in 24 countries, which or of extreme importance for the European film culture. According to the EFA these places of historical value need to be maintained and protected not just now but also for generations to come.Famou ...

'Selling a Colonial War' proofs Dutch propaganda and censorship

After Joris Ivens made Indonesia Calling (1946) he was immedialtely accused of anti-Dutch propapaganda. Officers of the Secret Service also immediately proposed to withdraw Ivens'passport. Not in 1951, but already in 1945. In a new documentary Selling a Colonial War filmmaker In-Soo Radstake casts a broad view of perpectives, among others a remarkable view of former Dutch minister of foreign affairs Ben Bot. He confirms that it was the Dutch government itself which used pure propaganda, censorship and concealing language to disinform or not inf ...

Absurd spy thriller about Ivens and Van Dongen is indeed absurd

The Second Stage production of Spain in the Tony Kiser Theater in New York presented in December '23 a play about The Spanish Earth with Joris Ivens, Helen van Dongen, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos as the protagonists. Jen Silverman writes that Spain is not “a history play in the most conventional meaning.” It’s “set in 1936 in the West Village,” she says, then adds, “Sort of.” "This 90-minute comedy-drama is an absurdist-tinged fantasy that seizes a moment of history and bends it to the breaking point", she continues. And ...

A performance of Rain at a Climate Change programme

During a concert at the 'Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy' University of Music and Theater in Leipzig the subject of Climate Change was íllustrated' by Ivens' film Rain/Regen (1929) accompanying Hanns Eisler’s "14 Arten den Regen zu beschreiben" (*Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain). In a packed great concert hall this magnificent performance became a marvellous highlight of the night. The musicians played with energy, joy and much competence. Hanns Eislers and Joris Ivens art works were much appreciated by the audience and critics as well.The initia ...

A Gift of Ivens films

Recently the Ivens Foundation received six reels of a working copy of The 17th Parallel (1968). Laurence Lefèvre gave these reels to André Stufkens in her place in Montreuil. She got this working copy from her sister, the late Liliane Korb, who passed away in 2022. At the age of 26 Liliane Korb edited this long documentary about the peoples war and fight for independence of the Vietnamese people against the US occupation. Previously the Ivens Foundation also received an old print of Borinage from the Limburg Museum. Liliane Korb Lilia ...

How an Ivens film helps to reconstruct cultural heritage in Valparaiso

In 1963 Joris Ivens made, together with students from the university in Santiago de Chile, a poetic film mosaic of the Chilean harbour city Valparaiso, called …à Valparaiso. This film is part of the cultural heritage of this city, in 2003 elected UNESCO World heritage. Amanda Panizza Hevia published a plan to reconstruct the Casa de Los Siete Espejos (‘The House with Seven Mirrors’) as part of a new department of the regional archives of Valparaiso. ...

Women and the Far East in The 400 Million

During the Hanns Eisler Discourse at Humboldt University in Berlin on 5 and 6 November Japanese scholar Chiharu Wada (Meiji-Gakuin University, Tokyo) will lecture about Women and the Far East in the documentary The 400 Million (USA, 1939). Joris Ivens' documentary The 400 Million deliberately presents a "new" image of China, where women and men study together, "as in America". It is Ivens' perspective for a modern Chinese society in which women are equal to men, although this representation did not really matched reality in society i ...

Looking for my father in an Ivens film

Recently a citizen from Montpellier travelled 1200 kilometres to visit the Joris Ivens Archives in order to find his biological father. There are many reasons why people around the world consult the Ivens collection, but this is a very special and personal one. He wanted to look for his father, which he has never known and met, in Ivens’ documentary Peace Will Win (1951)

Ivens Meets China

After years of preparations and research, professor Zhang Tongdao (University of Beijing) and Dutch filmmaker René Seegers finalized their four-part television series about Joris Ivens. In each part of 50 minutes one of Ivens’s Chinese films is key: 1- The 400 Million (1938); 2- Before Spring (1958); 3- How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976) and 4- A Tale of the Wind (1988).

Picasso Shared and Divided: The Artist and His Image in East and West Germany

In 1951 Joris Ivens met Pablo Picasso during a visit to his atelier in Vaucluses. Marion Michelle made a series of photos of them, together with poet Jacques Prévert, which are on display at the exhibition about 'Picasso: Shared and Divided' in Museum Ludwig, Cologne (25 September 2021-30 January 2022). After the Second World War Picasso was 'a hero of the left' and used in this way. His dove, symbol for world peace, became a tool for propaganda in the Eastern Bloc. What do we associate with Pablo Picasso today? A ...

Project of a Book on the History of FIAF

FIAF, in partnership with the Jan de Vaal Fund, invites film historians to submit proposals for thematic chapters as part of a forthcoming book on the 82-year history of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), both as an institution and as a coherent global community with its shared values, cultural missions, professional practices, scientific methods, and collaborative projects. The European Foundation Joris Ivens is an associate of FIAF since 2002 and André Stufkens is participating as co-editor of the book, together with Chris ...

Each month a guest curator presents a piece of (film)art , made by a new or relatively unknown filmmaker, with both poetic and political qualities. Joris Ivens was a political filmmaker and a poetic filmmaker altogether.. "What all my films have in common is that people are moved by something. Moved by their desire for freedom, moved by water, moved by the wind. I don't think there is any difference between Ivens filming the wind or Ivens filming revolutions," said Ivens himself in 1976. In light of this thought, we created this space for (film)artists working in the field of “Politics and Poetry”. Even though we will work with different curators each month, please feel free to suggest your own film or piece of art. You can also present yourself as a curator if you consider a film or piece of art relevant to the theme of “Politics and Poetry” and hence warrant more critical attention.

Name curator: Joe Richey/Alternative Radio
Name artist: Amiri Baraka
Title of the work you have chosen: Real Politics, Real poetry
Year of production: recorded at Naropa University, July 6, 2012
Format: mp3

This month we have something we had never before: An audio-podcast of Alternative Radio on poet Amiri Baraka. Please listen.

Name curator: Ana Siqueira
Name artist: Edu Yatri Ioschpe
Title of the work you have chosen: Retrato número 1 - O povo acordado e suas mil bandeiras
English title: Portrait Number 1 - An Awakened People and their Thousand Flags
Year of production: 2013
Format: Digital

English subtitles are available in You Tube! Please click on the subtitle screen in the right corner.

Name curator: Lucas Murari
Name artist: João Silvério Trevisan
Title of the work you have chosen: Contestação
English title: Rebellion
Year of production: 1969
Format: 16 mm

English subtitles are available in You Tube! Please click on the subtitle screen in the right corner.

Name curator: André Dias
Name artist: Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias
Title of the work you have chosen: AOPÇÃO OU AS ROSAS DA ESTRADA
English title: A OPTION OR ROSES OF THE ROAD
Year of production: 1981
Format: 35mm

Interview with curator André Dias about this selection will follow as soon as possible....

Name curator: José Sarmiento and Mónica Delgado
Name artist: Paula Gaitan
Title of the work you have chosen: UAKA
English title: UAKA
Year of production: 1988
Format: 35mm

No subtitles (on purpose....)

Name curator: Dick Smits
Name artist: George Franju
Title of the work you have chosen: Le sang des bêtes
English title: Blood of the Beasts
Year of production: 1949
Format: 4:3

Watch 'Le sang des bêtes' here, narrated in English.

Because of hollidays there was no PandP selection in August

Name curator: Pedro Tavares
Name artist: Laura Waddington
Title of the work you have chosen: Border
English title: Border
Year of production: 2004
Format: 27 min. Digibeta PAL, Colour, Stereo

Read down here the interview with the curator Pedro Mota Tavares about his selection

Name curator: TONI D'ANGELA
Name artist: STEPHANIE WUERTZ & SASHA JANERUS
Title of the work you have chosen: CALGON
English title: CALGON
Year of production: 2014
Format: 16mm to Digital

Down here a letter from the filmmakers ánd an interview with the curator Toni D'angela (in French)

Name curator: Sylvain George
Name artist: Ken Jacobs
Title of the work you have chosen: « Capitalism : slavery »
English title: « Capitalism : slavery »
Year of production: 2006
Format: digital

The interview with the curator of this film Sylvian George will be available soon:

Name curator: Paul Douglas Grant
Name artist: Nick Deocampo
Title of the work you have chosen: Oliver
Year of production: 1983
Format: Super 8

Down here, you can read the interview with the curator of this film, Paul Douglas Grant:

Name curator: Mei Yang
Title of the work you have chosen: “Wo sui siqu”
Name filmmaker: Hu Jie
English title: “Though I am Gone”
Year of production: 2006
Format: digital video

This month we have a long film at our Politics and Poetry page: 'Though I am Gone', selected by Mei Yang assistant Professor of Chinese, University of San Diego. Curators from all over the world have selected films from everywhere and we are glad to screen the first Chinese production now. Please watch this film, thank you!