#joris ivens

[fidjiefidjie]

Bon Soir 🗼👌 🗼

"La Seine a rencontré Paris"

✒️ Jacques Prévert

📷 André Dumaître

🎶 Philippe Gérard

🗣 Serge Reggiani

🎥 Joris Ivens...extrait du court métrage Palme d'or Cannes 1958

[edwordsmyth]

17th Parallel: The People's War, Joris Ivens / Marceline Loridan (1968)

[teethburied]

…A Valparaíso (1963) dir. Joris Ivens

[davidhudson]

Joris Ivens, November 18, 1898 – June 28, 1989.

With Agnès Varda.

[strathshepard]

Far from Vietnam (1967, directed by Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais). Movie poster designed by Kiroku Higaki

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2023:

. . . A Valparaiso (Joris Ivens), 1963

[blackswaneuroparedux]

You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some courtyard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night, in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights of the car from down the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies.

- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

The 1937 film The Spanish Earth, was an important visual document of the Spanish Civil War and a rare record of the famous writer's voice. Hemingway went to Spain in the spring of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), but spent a good deal of time working on the film.

Before leaving America, he and a group of artists that included Archibald MacLeish, John Dos Passos and Lillian Hellman banded together to form Contemporary Historians, Inc., to produce a film to raise awareness and money for the Spanish Republican cause. The group came up with $18,000 in production money - $5,000 of it from Hemingway - and hired the Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, a passionate leftist, to make the movie.

MacLeish and Ivens drafted a short outline for the story, with a theme of agrarian reform. It was MacLeish who came up with the title. The film, as they envisioned it, would tell the story of Spain's revolutionary struggle through the experience of a single village. To do that, Ivens planned to stage a number of scenes. When he and cameraman John Fernhout (known as "Ferno") arrived in Spain they decided to focus on the tiny hamlet of Fuentedueña de Tajo, southeast of Madrid, but they soon realised it would be impossible to set up elaborate historical re-enactments in a country at war. They kept the theme of agrarian struggle as a counterpoint to the war.

When Dos Passos arrived in Fuentedueña, he encouraged that approach. "Our Dutch director," wrote Dos Passos, "did agree with me that, instead of making the film purely a blood and guts picture we ought to find something being built for the future amid all the misery and massacre."

That changed when Hemingway arrived.

The friendship between the two writers was disintegrating at the time, so they didn't work together on the project. It was agreed upon in advance that Hemingway would write the commentary for the film, but while in Spain he also helped Ivens and Fernhout navigate the dangers of the war zone. Hemingway was a great help to the film crew. With a flask of whisky and raw onions in his pockets, he lugged equipment and arranged transport. Ivens generally wore battle dress and a black beret. Hemingway went as far as a beret but otherwise stuck to civvies. Although he rarely wore glasses, he almost never took them off in Spain, clear evidence of the seriousness of their task."

In Night Before Battle, a short story based partially on his experience making the movie, Hemingway describes what it's like filming in a place where the glint from your camera lens draws fire from enemy snipers:

“At this time we were working in a shell-smashed house that overlooked the Casa del Campo in Madrid. Below us a battle was being fought. You could see it spread out below you and over the hills, could smell it, could taste the dust of it, and the noise of it was one great slithering sheet of rifle and automatic rifle fire rising and dropping, and in it came the crack of the guns and the bubbly rumbling of the outgoing shells fired from the batteries behind us, the thud of their bursts, and then the rolling yellow clouds of dust. But it was just too far to film well. We had tried working closer but they kept sniping at the camera and you could not work.”

The big camera was the most expensive thing we had and if it was smashed we were through. We were making the film on almost nothing and all the money was in the cans of film and the cameras. We could not afford to waste film and you had to be awfully careful of the cameras.

The day before we had been sniped out of a good place to film from and I had to crawl back holding the small camera to my belly, trying to keep my head lower than my shoulders, hitching along on my elbows, the bullets whocking into the brick wall over my back and twice spurting dirt over me.

The Western front at Casa de Campo on the outskirts of Madrid was just a few minutes' walk from the Florida Hotel, where the filmmakers were staying. Any doubt about whether the passage from "Night Before Battle" is autobiographical are dispelled in the following excerpt from one of Hemingway's NANA dispatches, quoted by Schoots:

“Just as we were congratulating ourselves on having such a splendid observation post and the non-existent danger, a bullet smacked against a corner of brick wall beside Ivens's head. Thinking it was a stray, we moved over a little and, as I watched the action with glasses, shading them carefully, another came by my head. We changed our position to a spot where it was not so good observing and were shot at twice more. Joris thought Ferno had left his camera at our first post, and as I went back for it a bullet whacked into the wall above. I crawled back on my hands and knees, and another bullet came by as I crossed the exposed corner. We decided to set up the big telephoto camera. Ferno had gone back to find a healthier situation and chose the third floor of a ruined house where, in the shade of a balcony and with the camera camouflaged with old clothes we found in the house, we worked all afternoon and watched the battle.”

In May, Ivens returned to New York to oversee the work of editor Helen van Dongen. Hemingway soon followed. When Ivens asked Hemingway to clarify the theme of the picture, according to Kenneth Lynn in his erudite biography Hemingway (1987), the writer supplied three sentences: "We gained the right to cultivate our land by democratic elections. Now the military cliques and absentee landlords attack to take our land from us again. But we fight for the right to irrigate and cultivate this Spanish Earth which the nobles kept idle for their own amusement."

There were tense moments when Hemingway handed in his first draft of the commentary. Ivens felt it was too verbose, and asked him to make some cuts. Hemingway didn't like being told to shorten his work, but he eventually agreed. There was more tension when MacLeish asked Orson Welles to deliver the narration. Even though Hemingway had already shortened it, Welles thought the commentary was too long, and he told him so.

"Arriving at the studio," Welles said in a 1964 interview with Cahiers du Cinema, "I came upon Hemingway, who was in the process of drinking a bottle of whiskey; I had been handed a set of lines that were too long, dull, had nothing to do with his style, which is always so concise and so economical. There were lines as pompous and complicated as this: 'Here are the faces of men who are close to death,' and this was to be read at a moment when one saw faces on the screen that were so much more eloquent. I said to him, 'Mr. Hemingway, it would be better if one saw the faces all alone, without commentary.'"

Hemingway growled at him in the dark studio, according to Welles, and said, "You effeminate boys of the theatre, what do you know about real war?" Welles continues the story:

“Well, taking the bull by the horns, I began to make effeminate gestures and I said to him, "Mister Hemingway, how strong you are and how big you are!" That enraged him and he picked up a chair; I picked up another and, right there, in front of the images of the Spanish Civil War, as they marched across the screen, we had a terrible scuffle. It was something marvelous: two guys like us in front of these images representing people in the act of struggling and dying...We ended up toasting each other over a bottle of whisky.”

Skeptics have questioned the truthfulness of Welles's account, suggesting that he may have been trying to compensate for his own moment of humiliation, which followed soon after the recording session. MacLeish and Ivens liked Welles's performance, but Hellman and several other members of the Contemporary Historians group didn't. They thought Welles had been too theatrical, and suggested Hemingway read the narration himself.

The director eventually agreed. "When Ivens informed Welles that his own recording was going to be junked," writes Lynn, "Welles was miffed, especially since he had waived his right to a fee." 

On July 8, 1937, Ivens, Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, a journalist who had been with Hemingway in Spain and who would later become his wife, traveled to the White House to show the film to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The visit had been arranged by Gellhorn, who was a friend of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

A few days later Hemingway and Ivens traveled to Los Angeles to show the film to Hollywood moguls and movie stars. F. Scott Fitzgerald attended the screening, and the party afterward. It was the last time Hemingway and Fitzgerald saw each other. When Hemingway was back on the East Coast, Fitzgerald sent him a telegram: "THE PICTURE WAS BEYOND PRAISE AND SO WAS YOUR ATTITUDE."

The press reviews for The Spanish Earth tended to be a bit more equivocal. Some felt the film descended into out-and-out propaganda, to which Ivens later replied, "on issues of life and death, democracy or fascism, the true artist cannot be objective." But the writer of a 1938 article in Time magazine saw the film in a positive light:

“Not since the silent French film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, has such dramatic use been made of the human face. As face after face looks out from the screen the picture becomes a sort of portfolio of portraits of the human soul in the presence of disaster and distress. There are the earnest faces of speakers at meetings and in the village talking war, exhorting the defense. There are faces of old women moving from their homes in Madrid for safety's sake, staring at a bleak, uncertain future, faces in terror after a bombing, faces of men going into battle and the faces of men who will never return from battle, faces full of grief and determination and fear.”

In the end, with its mix of documentary and re-constructed elements, The Spanish Earth is at once a less elaborate but more complex film than that first conceived by Ivens. One critic aptly describes it as "an improvised hybrid of many filmic modes." This gives the film a curiously contemporary feel, but what really marks it out as a landmark of documentary filmmaking is its directness, its sense of immediacy, and its refusal to have any truck with spurious notions of "objectivity."

Ivens himself states that "My unit had really become part of the fighting forces," and again, "We never forgot that we were in a hurry. Our job was not to make the best of all films, but to make a good film for exhibition in the United States, in order to collect money to send ambulances to Spain. When we started shooting we didn't always wait for the best conditions to get the best shot. We just tried to get good, useful shots."

When asked why he hadn't tried to be more "objective" Ivens retorted that "a documentary film maker has to have an opinion on such vital issues as fascism or anti-fascism - he has to have feelings about these issues, if his work is to have any dramatic, emotional or art value," adding that "after informing and moving audiences, a militant documentary film should agitate - mobilise them to become active in connection with the problems shown in the film." Ivens would later justify his beliefs by stating, "on issues of life and death, democracy or fascism, the true artist cannot be objective."

Not that The Spanish Earth is in any sense strident - indeed, quite the reverse. Ivens understood fully the power of restraint and suggestion, quoting approvingly, à propos his film, John Steinbeck's observation of the London blitz that "In all of the little stories it is the ordinary, the commonplace thing or incident against the background of the bombing that leaves the indelible picture."

Ivens's visual restraint is matched by that of the commentary. The original commentary by Orson Welles did feel out of place and I would agree with Ivens sentiment that, "There was something in the quality of Welles’ voice that separated it from the film, from Spain, from the actuality of the film." Hemingway's manner of speaking, however, perfectly matched the pared-down quality of his writing. Ivens saw the function of the commentary as being "to provide sharp little guiding arrows to the key points of the film" and as serving as "a base on which the spectator was stimulated to form his own conclusions." He described Hemingway's mode of delivery as sounding like that of "a sensitive reporter who has been on the spot and wants to tell you about it. The lack of a professional commentator's smoothness helped you to believe intensely in the experiences on the screen."

Overall the film's avoidance of overt propagandising reflected not only Ivens' conception of the documentary aesthetic - it was also hoped that this might help The Spanish Earth achieve a wide theatrical release. However, as in Britain, there was thought to be no cinema audience for documentary films, and the plan failed. Nor did it help the film to escape the watchful eye of the British Board of Film Censors (who had previously attacked Ivens' New Earth) , who insisted that all references to Italian and German intervention were cut from the commentary, those countries being regarded as "friendly powers" at the time.

Photo (above): Ernest Hemingway and director Joris Ivens During the shooting of "The Spanish Earth" (1937).

[schizografia]

La giovane schizofrenica avverte i suoi «primi sentimenti d’irrealtà» davanti a due immagini: quella di una compagna che si avvicina e il cui volto si ingrandisce esageratamente (si direbbe un leone); quella di un campo di grano che diventa illimitato, «immensità dorata, luminosa”. Ecco, rifacendosi alla terminologia di Peirce, come risulteranno i due segni dell’immagine-affezione: Icona per l’espressione di una qualità-potenza operata da un volto, Qualisegno (oppure Potisegno) per la sua presentazione in uno spazio qualsiasi. Certi film di Joris Ivens ci danno un’idea di cosa sia un qualisegno: in Regen, «la pioggia che si vede nel film non è quella data pioggia, concreta e determinata, caduta un certo giorno e in un certo luogo. Queste impressioni visive non sono raccolte in unità da alcuna figurazione spaziale o temporale. Con estrema sensibilità, Ivens ha scoperto non come la pioggia è in realtà, ma che cosa accade (e in qual modo) quando la pioggerella primaverile batte sulle foglie degli alberi, quando lo specchio dello stagno rabbrividisce, quando una goccia solitaria cerca esitando la sua via su una lastra di vetro, quando la vita di una metropoli si riflette sull’umido asfalto. […] Anche quando Ivens ci mostra un ponte, da lui stesso indicato come il grande viadotto ferroviario di Rotterdam (Il ponte), la costruzione di ferro si dissolve in immagini immateriali inquadrate in cento modi diversi. Basta il fatto che questo ponte possa essere visto in tanti modi per renderlo in un certo senso irreale. Esso non ci appare come l’opera concreta degli ingegneri che lo costruirono, ma come una serie di curiosi effetti ottici. Si tratta insomma di variazioni visive sulle quali ben difficilmente potrebbe transitare un treno merci». Non è un concetto di ponte, ma non è nemmeno l’individuato stato di cose definito dalla sua forma, dalla sua materia metallica, dai suoi usi e funzioni. È una potenzialità. Il rapido montaggio dei settecento piani-inquadrature fa sí che le diverse vedute possano raccordarsi in un’infinità di modi e, non essendo orientate le une in rapporto alle altre, costituiscono l’insieme delle singolarità che si coniugano nello spazio qualsiasi in cui questo ponte appare come pura qualità, questo metallo come pura potenza, la stessa Rotterdam come affetto. E neanche la pioggia è il concetto di pioggia, o lo stato di un tempo e di un luogo piovosi. È piuttosto un insieme di singolarità che presenta la pioggia cosí com’è in sé, pura potenza o qualità che coniuga senza astrazione tutte le piogge possibili, e compone il corrispondente spazio qualsiasi. È la pioggia come affetto, e niente si oppone maggiormente a un’idea astratta o generale, pur non essendo attualizzata in uno stato di cose individuale.

Gilles Deleuze

[spectaculardistractions]

From Joseph Losey

[Mexico City,] 17 September 1971

Dear Buñuel, It has been more than thirty-five years since we met. Perhaps you will remember coming to my house in New York on several occasions, having been sent to me by our mutual friend, Joris Ivens. I still see Joris, and it is strange that with him and our many other mutual friends, from poor George Pepper to Jeanne Moreau, that we never seem to have encountered each other in the intervening years.

As you perhaps have seen, I am here shooting locations of a picture about the assassination of Trotsky, and I understand that you are now in Mexico. It would be pleasant to greet you, if you have a few minutes. If you feel like it, do drop me a note or give me a ring, and perhaps we can have a brief drink one evening after shooting. I am scheduled to leave on 29 September.

Sincerely yours, Joseph Losey

Jo Evans & Breixo Viejo, Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters

[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2024: Pordenone Post No 7

Blood, sweat and tears on the screen today. And to cap it all off, prizes! That’s Friday in Pordenone, folks. Read all about it.   Your scribe is a little squeamish, I must confess, so this morning I had to resort to an old trick, and pop my glasses off during some of Arabi (Nadezhda Zubova, 1933), a drama about sheep farmers organising to form a collective and defeat the feudal powers that…

[plaques-memoire]

Plaque en hommage à : Marceline Loridan-Ivens et Joris Ivens

Type : Lieu de résidence

Adresse : 61 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris, France

Date de pose : 2019 (délibération) [source]

Texte : Ici vécurent de 1964 à leur décès Marceline LORIDAN-IVENS née ROZENBERG, 1928-2018, déportée à Auschwitz-Birkenau à l'âge de 16 ans, matricule 78750, et Joris IVENS, 1898-1989, surnommé "le Hollandais volant", Cinéastes et Écrivains

Quelques précisions : Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018) et Joris Ivens (1898-1989) sont un couple de cinéastes, la première française, le second néerlandais. Marceline, en raison de ses origines juives, est arrêtée pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et déportée à Auschwitz, où elle nouera une solide amitié avec Simone Veil. Survivant à la guerre, elle se tourne vers le militantisme politique, avant de se tourner vers le monde du cinéma. C'est par ce biais qu'elle rencontre Joris, qu'elle épousera malgré les trente ans qui les séparent. Tous deux réaliseront par exemple Le 17e parallèle (1968), un film sur la guerre du Vietnam, ainsi qu'une série de documentaires controversés sur la révolution culturelle chinoise. Avant de rencontrer Marceline, Joris avait déjà réalisé de nombreux documentaires et plusieurs films de propagande (mais peu furent diffusés en France), et il recevra le Lion d'Or en 1988 pour l'ensemble de sa carrière. Après la mort de son époux, Marceline rédige plusieurs publications sur la Shoah et ses conséquences, dont une autobiographie, Et tu n'es pas revenu (2015), qui lui vaudra le prix Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

[genevieveetguy]

…A Valparaíso, Joris Ivens (1963)

[edwordsmyth]

17th Parallel: The People's War, Joris Ivens / Marceline Loridan (1968)

[4eternal-life]

A Tale of the Wind (1988)

A Tale of the Wind (Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, 1988)

[davidhudson]

Joris Ivens, November 18, 1898 – June 28, 1989.

[1001framesofmind]

A poetic documentary about the intertwining relationship between the River Seine and Paris.

"The Seine is like a person sometimes she runs and rushes past hurrying her step when evening falls. Sometimes in spring she pulls up short and gazes at you like a mirror. And if you cry she cries or smiles to cheer you up and always breaks into laughter when the summer sun appears."

🎞film: The Seine Meets Paris La Seine a recontré Paris 🎬director: Joris Ivens 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣