Joris Ivens
The filmmaker Joris Ivens was the son of C.A.P. Ivens, owner of the CAPI photography shop in Nijmegen. With the help of his father’s employees, in the 1910s the young Joris Ivens made the short film De wigwam, with roles for his parents, brothers, and sisters. Ivens studied... Read full bio →
Une histoire de vent
It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.
The Drugstore
Filmed inside Pharmacy No. 3 in Shanghai, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens document the daily work of a state pharmacy that functions as both a dispensary and a neighborhood medical center. The film focuses on routine interactions between staff and patients, revealing an integrated model of urban healthcare in 1970s China.
Le peuple et ses fusils
Filmed in Laos in 1968, this four-part documentary examines the armed struggle against foreign intervention during the Indochina conflicts. The film focuses on the relationship between the population and guerrilla forces engaged in the war.
Le 17e parallèle: La guerre du peuple
On the border of North and South Vietnam, civilians live underground and cultivate their land in the dead of night, farmers take up arms, and bombs fall like clockwork.
Loin du Vietnam
In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.
...A Valparaíso
In 1962 Joris Ivens was invited to Chile for teaching and filmmaking. Together with students he made …A Valparaíso, one of his most poetic films.
The Spanish Earth
Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival.
Misère au Borinage
Henri Storck and Joris Ivens’ landmark of social documentary, blending staged scenes with locals and on-the-spot reportage to depict the 1932 miners’ strike in Belgium’s Borinage—evictions, hunger, and police repression—transforming outrage into a call for solidarity.
Nieuwe gronden
The film is a documentary portraying a struggle as man tries to subdue nature. To prevent flooding and for purposes of land reclamation, the people of the Netherlands struggle and succeed in building a breaker, thereby eliminating the wild inland body of water once known as the Zuider Zee (now called Ijsselmeer).
Philips-Radio
A poetic industrial short that follows a radio from molten glass to finished set: glassblowers shape valves, conveyors and assembly lines build chassis, cabinets, and speakers, engineers test and prototype—ending on a playful stop-motion “dance” of loudspeakers.
Regen
A lyrical portrait of Amsterdam and its changing appearance during a rain-shower.