Joris Ivens

An eternal globetrotter, Joris Ivens was a Dutch filmmaker born in 1895 who traveled the world. An activist and philosopher, he was also a poet and utopian. He saw himself as a witness to revolutionary hope. From his first film, The Bridge (1928), he attracted the attention of avant-garde circles. Rain (1929) brought him recognition at home and abroad. In 1932, he became the first foreign filmmaker to work in the Soviet Union. In 1933, with Henri Storck, he shot one of his major works, Borinage, about the consequences of a strike in a Belgian mining region. With John Ferno and Ernest Hemingway, he filmed The Spanish Earth in 1937, during the country's devastating civil war. He then left for the United States, Canada and Indonesia. In 1957, Ivens was in Paris shooting The Seine Meets Paris, then in China for Letters from China  and The war of the 600 Million People. He then travelled to Italy, Mali, Cuba and Vietnam. In the 1970s, he traveled extensively in China, and in 1976, he brought together several films under the title How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976). His last film, A Tale of the Wind (1988), was co-directed with his partner Marceline Loridan.