From the blu-ray cover:
Henri Storck (Ostend 1907 – Brussels 1999) lived through the whole history of cinema, passing from silent to sound, and from experimental to commercial films. He is recognised as a pioneer of Belgian cinema and a key figure in documentary. Misère au Borinage, which he co-directed with Joris Ivens in 1933, has become a classic of the ‘cinema of reality’ with which he was most closely associated.Read More »
At the age of 13 Joris Ivens was fond of Cowboys and Indians stories, so he decided to invent one himself. He made a script and used a camera from his father’s shop. This became his first film Wigwam, with his own family as cast. Black Eagle, a bad indian, kidnaps the daughter of a farmer’s family. Flaming Arrow, played by the young Joris Ivens, saves the child from the kidnapper and brings it back to her family. No better conclusion than smoking a peace pipe.Read More »
Documentary about the resistance of the Chinese against the Japanese invasion and occupation from Manchuria. The Chinese had joined forces against this common enemy. The nationalistic Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-sjek and the communist party cooperated, at least on paper.Read More »
A movement study in which all possible camera angles are tried out to observe the chaos of traffic flows in Paris.Read More »
Soviet solidarity is strong in Germany where the Communist Party (KPD) marches under the clenched fist in spite of police harassment… Radio broadcasts reach all parts of the Soviet Union, including Magnitogorsk. On the steppe near the city, a family of nomads lives in their yurt. The father hears blasting: iron ore for the steelworks. Crushed ore and coke yield molten steel for the ladle. Stop-motion animation shows the bountiful tractor and freight car output of the future… A new blast-furnace is under construction. Accepting jobs at the site are women, ethnic minorities, and the nomad. An English-speaking engineer supervises; a young riveter learns his trade from an old hand… In the Kubass region, miners labour to produce the coal which becomes coke in Magnitogorsk… At last the blast-furnace is complete. Workers celebrate. A cheerful patriotic song is sung. Steel pours forth. The new day reveals a finished plant.Read More »
The vertical lift-bridge in Rotterdam is the object of study in The Bridge. Normally it seems to be a very static object, but Joris Ivens made a very dynamic film out of it. “For me, the bridge consisted of a laboratory of movements, tints, forms, contrasts, rythms and the relationship between all these phenomena”. The film was immediately recognised as a masterpiece by international critics and colleague filmmakers; Joris Ivens was at once the most famous avant-garde filmmaker of the Netherlands.Read More »
Eigth part: HISTOIRE D’UN BALLON: LE LYCEE NO. 31 A PEKIN (The Football Incident):
A report on an ideological debate between a teacher and a pupil regarding an incident with a football.Read More »
Quote:
Before the Panama Canal was dug in 1911, Valparaiso was one of the main seaports on the passage around Cape Horn. Over the centuries, the city fell into the hands of different conquerors, and natural violence repeatedly destroyed it for the greater part. In cooperation with the university of Santiago de Chile, Joris Ivens made a semi-documentary about the daily life in Valparaiso, where the contrasts between poor and rich immediately strike the eye. Ivens chose realistic, but also poetical images. The abrupt shift from black-and-white to colour in the film marks the transition from the initial pessimistic part to the later, more hopeful images.Read More »
Plot/Description: from IMDB
This documentary tells of the struggles during the Spanish Civil War. It deals with the war at different levels: from the political level, at the ground military level focusing on battles in Madrid and the road from Madrid to Valencia, and at the support level. With the latter, a key project was building an irrigation system for an agricultural field near Fuentedueña so that food could be grown to feed the soldiers.Read More »