Ivens, Joris (1898–1989)

Dutch documentary filmmaker. He explored a range of social and political issues, with as much emphasis placed on the accompanying commentary as on the visual images. The Spanish Earth (1937), for example, about the Spanish Civil War, has a commentary written by the US novelist Ernest Hemingway.

With Komsomol/The Song of Heroes (1932), made in the USSR, Ivens became an international filmmaker. He made films in Africa, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Italy, France, and the USA. In 1956 he directed his only fictional feature, The Adventures of Till Eulenspiegel. The following year he won the prize for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival for La Seine a Rencontré Paris/The Seine has Met Paris (1957).

Among his other films are Zuiderzee (1933), New Earth (1934), The 400 Million (1938), Indonesia Calling (1946), The Threatening Sky (1965), and How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1975).

Ivens was born in Nijmegen. The grandson of a pioneering Dutch photographer, he made his first film aged 13, Flaming Arrow, starring the members of his family. Having studied chemistry and photography, he worked for numerous photographic companies in Germany, where he became involved with left-wing political groups, before returning to the Netherlands in 1926 to manage the family firm. Inspired by the Soviet director Vsevolod Pudovkin's film Mother (1926), he cofounded the Dutch Film League (Filmliga) to exhibit and produce experimental films. The Bridge (1928) combined montage with impressionistic imagery to explore the mechanism and function of a drawbridge. In 1929 Ivens was invited by Pudovkin to the USSR, where he made Breakers, his first fictional film, and Rain, a cinematic exercise in which he constructed a single downpour from footage shot over four months.

Retaining his artistic integrity throughout his career, Ivens made his final film, A Story of the Wind (1988), at the age of 90. He regularly collaborated with his wife, screenwriter Marceline Loridan (1928– ).