Happy Birthday, Joris Ivens! Born today in 1898 as Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens, this Dutch propagandist and documentary filmmaker was among the most influential and prolific of documentary filmmakers.
Throughout his career, he had filmed more than fifty international documentaries that explored leftist social and political concerns.
Born in Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands, Ivens was the son of a wealthy family.
Years later, he went to work in one of his father's photo supply shops and from there developed an interest in film. Originally, Ivens' work focused on technique.
Under the direction of his father, Ivens completed his first film at thirteen; 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.
In 1923, Ivens met Polish photographer, political activist and hotel owner Germaine Krull in Berlin, Germany.
He had entered into a marriage of convenience with his first wife between 1927 and 1943. This was so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy."
Around this time, along with Dutch modernist author Menno ter Braak and others, Ivens was involved in the creation of the De Nederlandsche Filmliga (Dutch Film League) based in Amsterdam.
The League later drew foreign filmmakers to the Netherlands, who also became Ivens' friends.
These included Sergei M. Eisenstein ('Strike', 'Battleship Potemkin', 'October: Ten Days That Shook the World', 'Ivan the Terrible: Parts 1 & 2'), Vsevolod Pudovkin ('Storm Over Asia'), Dziga Vertov ('Man with a Movie Camera'), René Clair ('Le Million', 'Freedom for Us'), and Brazilian-born film director and producer Alberto Cavalcanti.
In 1929, Ivens went to the Soviet Union and 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 for Philips Electric, which is considered to be a film of great technical beauty.
Later, Ivens returned to the Soviet Union to make the film about Magnitogorsk. This was with the fifty-minute 1932 Russian black and white documentary film 'Song of Heroes', with music written by Austrian composer Hanns 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 forced laborers and communist youth worked for Stalin's Five Year Plan.
From 1936 to 1945, Ivens was based in the United States. For American filmmaker Pare Lorentz's (known for his film work about the New Deal) U.S. Film Service, Ivens made the thirty-eight-minute 1940 American black and white documentary short 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 films.
This included the fifty-two-minute 1937 American black and white propaganda documentary war short film 'The Spanish Earth'. The short was for the Spanish Republicans, and was co-written with Ernest Hemingway.
Jean Renoir ('La Chienne', 'Boudu Saved from Drowning', 'The Grand Illusion', 'The Rules of the Game', 'A Day in the Country', 'The Golden Coach') did the French narration for the film and Hemingway did the English version only after Orson Welles' sounded too theatrical.
This film was financed by American actor Fredric March, as well as other Hollywood film stars, moguls, and writers who composed a group known as the Contemporary Historians.
The Spanish Earth' was later shown at the White House on July 8, 1937, after Ivens, Hemingway and American novelist, travel writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn had had dinner with 32nd U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.
This was also along with American social worker, the 8th Secretary of Commerce, and FDR's closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II Harry Hopkins.
The Roosevelts loved the film, but afterwards said that it needed more propaganda. However, this documentary was considered to be Ivens' masterpiece.
In 1938, Ivens traveled to China. His fifty-two-minute 1939 American black and white war/historical documentary film 'The 400 Million' (also known as 'China in 1938'). It, too, had been financed by the same people as those of 'The Spanish Earth'.
Its chief fundraiser was German-American-British film actress Luise Rainer. She had been the recipient of the Best Actress Oscar two years in a row. The entire group of those who financed called themselves this time, History Today, Inc.
Hungarian-born American war photographer and photojournalist Robert Capa provided the camerawork and Sidney Lumet ('12 Angry Men', 'Serpico', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network') worked on the film as a reader.
The short depicted the history of modern China and the Chinese resistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War, including dramatic shots of the Battle of Taierzhuang.
The major political party in the Republic of China, the Kuomintang of China (KMT), also often alternatively translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP) and currently based in Taipei, censored the film, fearing that it would give too much credit to left-wing forces.
Ivens was also suspected of being a friend of Mao Zedong and especially the first Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai.
In early 1943, Frank Capra ('The Bitter Tea of General Yen', 'It Happened One Night', 'Mr. Deeds Goes to Town', 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington', 'It's a Wonderful Life') hired Ivens for work.
This was to supervise the production of the 1945 American black and white history/propaganda film 'Know Your Enemy: Japan' for his U.S. War Department seven-documentary film series "Why We Fight".
The film's commentary was written largely by American screenwriter and film producer Carl Foreman.
However, Capra later 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 that the 124th Emperor of Japan Michinomiya Hirohito was being depicted as a war criminal, and there was a policy shift to portray the Emperor more favorably after the war as a means of maintaining order in post-war Japan.
Later that same year, Ivens' marriage of convenience with Krull had expired, and they went their separate ways.
Also, that same year, Ivens directed two Allied propaganda films for the National Film Board of Canada, including Action Stations, about the Royal Canadian Navy's (RCN) escorting of convoys in the Battle of the Atlantic.
This was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, and was a major part of the Naval history of World War II.
The following year, Ivens married his second wife. This was the Dutch pioneering editor of documentary films Helen van Dongen.
She had previously collaborated with Ivens from 1925 to 1940, made several independent documentaries, and edited two of Robert J. Flaherty's ('Nanook of the North', 'Louisiana Story') films before retiring from filmmaking in her 40s.
With the emerging "Red Scare" of the late 1940s, Ivens was forced to leave the country in the early months of 33rd U.S. President Harry S. Truman's administration.
Ivens' leftist politics also put the kibosh on his first feature film project which was to have starred Greta Garbo. In fact, American film producer Walter Wanger, (of whom had produced 'Know Your Enemy: Japan') was adamant about "running [Ivens] out of town."
For around one decade, Ivens lived in Eastern Europe, working for several studios there. His position concerning Indonesia.
However, his taking sides for the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War annoyed the Dutch government. Over a period of many years, Ivens 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, as demonstrated by the fact that he was able to travel to New York City, New York to sit by the bedside of his old friend when he was ill. This was African-American bass baritone concert artist and stage and film actor Paul Robeson.
From 1965 to 1970, Ivens filmed two propaganda films about North Vietnam during the war.
This included participating in the collective work of the two-hour 1967 French drama/war documentary film 'Loin du Vietnam' ('Far from Vietnam'). Later that same year, Ivens was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.
Other notable filmmakers on the project included Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais ('Night and Fog', 'Hiroshima, Mon Amour', 'Last Year at Marienbad'), Agnès Varda ('Cleo from 5 to 7', 'Vagabond', 'The Gleaners and I') and Chris Marker ('La Jetée', 'Sunless').
The second feature was about North Vietnam during the war was the 1968 French/North Vietnamese black and white war/documentary film '17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple' ('17th Parallel: Vietnam in War').
From 1971 to 1977, Ivens co-directed (along with French writer and film director Marceline Loridan) the 1976 French propaganda documentary film 'Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes' ('How Yukong Moved the Mountains').
This staggering 763-minute film, shot by a Chinese film crew and divided into thirteen parts, tells about the Cultural Revolution in China, marking the end of an era.
While filming, Ivens was given unprecedented access because of his pro-communist views and his old personal friendships with Zedong and Enlai.
During this time, in 1976, Ivens married Loridan. She would be Iven's third and final wife, and would remain married to Ivens until his death.
After this, Ivens spoke to the then-public radio and television network Radio Netherlands Worldwide about his life and work in a wide-ranging interview.
Shortly before his death, Ivens released the last of more than forty films, as well as the film of which he is best known for co-writing, co-directing and starring in.
This was the 1988 French/British/West German/Dutch documentary film 'Une histoire de vent' ('A Tale of the Wind').
Also known as 'A Wind Story', it features Ivens as he travels in China and tries to capture the wind on film, while he reflects on his life and career.
Some months later, Ivens passed from a heart attack provoked by kidney failure during the night at a hospital in Paris, France on June 28, 1989. He was 90.
Ivens was later interred at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, the city's second-largest cemetery.
Later that same year, Ivens received the Golden Lion Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement. This occurred at the 45th Venice International Film Festival.
The following year, he received the Order of the Netherlands Lion in January 1989.
In 2010, a statue of Ivens was erected in the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris. It had been made by Irish-born Paris-based contemporary artist and sculptor Bryan McCormack, of whom specifically deals with social subject matters.
Five years later, Loridan-Ivens wrote her 2015 autobiographical book But You Did Not Come Back.
The memoir details her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau when she was just fifteen years old, and how she had been arrested by the Vichy government's militia, along with her father.
Three years later, Loridan-Ivens passed from complications of heart disease in Paris, France on September 18, 2018. She was 90.
Ivens' contributions to the development of documentary filmmaking are multitudinous.
It was his editing style that employed the principles of Russian montage editing, at the same time displaying an impressionistic lyricism, often focused on continuity of movement, which remains unsurpassed.
His sound films often utilized a dialectical relationship between sound and image, and several times he enjoyed significant collaborations with literary artists.
Although Ivens has been faulted for using too many re-enactments in his documentaries, the ultimate force of his work overshadows such criticisms.
Ivens had been active from 1911–1988.
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