How Yukong Moved the Mountains

Friendship Triumphs

Film about the third 'Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten für den Frieden' in East Berlin, 1951. West Germany is represented as a degenerate country which has been occupied by the Americans and is still inclined to fascism. We see the construction of the stadium, the departure and arrival of the delegations, the opening and closing by Enrico Berlinguer, a sports event, the parade of the delegations, a visit to Potsdam, folk dancing, and police violence against youngsters from West Berlin who want to visit East Germany because of the games. The film is interlaced with shots from the Korean War and a parade by NATO-troops in West Germany. Featuring Robert Montgomery, Konrad Adenauer, Wilhelm Pieck, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Leer and Erich Honecker. The crew comprised no less than 24 cameramen. This project was the first great colour film Ivens co-operated in.

The Threatening Sky

This documentary presents the Vietnam War as seen from within Vietnam, focusing on civilian life, industrial and agricultural labor, and organized resistance under sustained aerial bombardment. Introduced by Bertrand Russell, the film situates the conflict within a broader history of anti-occupation struggles, drawing parallels to World War II resistance movements. Footage includes interviews with Vietnamese leaders, scenes of air defense, and mass political mobilization.

The People and Their Guns

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.

Demain à Nanguila

"Demain à Nanguila" follows Moussa, a young man who leaves his village for Bamako in search of opportunity but instead encounters hardship and disillusionment. His return home becomes a reflection on rural exodus, tradition, and the challenges facing Mali in the early years of independence.

Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes

Letters from China

About the way of life in the East, in China, during the months before spring. An early spring.

The Pharmacy: Shanghai

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.

Rotterdam-Europoort

Instructional film about the (former) biggest harbour in the world, with a hybrid format. Well known Ivens themes are revisited, like The Flying Dutchman in the fiction part of the film, who returns to the modern day Rotterdam, that has recovered very well after the devastating bombardments in the second world war.

The Mistral

Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens follows the course of the famous wind as it originates in the Alps and finds its way to the Mediterranean Sea. Natural sounds and creative camera work provide a mood film showing the effect of the fury of the wind on the life of southern France.

Far from 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.

The 17th Parallel

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. Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s record of daily life in one of the most volatile regions of a war-torn, divided country is both a hazardous piece of first-hand journalism and a shattering work in its own right, simmering with barely repressed anger.

Valparaiso

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. Contrasting the prestigious history of the seaport with the present the film sketches a portrait of the city, built on 42 hills, with its wealth and poverty, its daily life on the streets, the stairs, the rack railways and in the bars. Although the port has lost its importance, the rich past is still present in the impoverished city. The film echoes this ambiguous situation in its dialectical poetic style, interweaving the daily life reality (of 1963) with the history of the city and changing from black and white to colour, finally leaving us with hopeful perspective for the children who are playing on the stairs and hills of this beautiful town.

Havre

Lili lives near the port of Le Havre. She is mourning her lover Pablo, who died leaving unfinished a video game he was developing for a Japanese trust. A young boy decides to take over the project, while Lili, guided by a mysterious figure called Doctor Digitalis, struggles with her grief and searches for meaning in his absence. The film blends reality and dreamlike visions against the backdrop of the docks and port landscapes.

Branding

Between documentary and fiction, "Branding" (also know as "Breakers") stars an unemployed sailor from Katwijk, a land that sparked Ivens’ interest in the movement of the big waves crashing on the rocks. Determined to film them, he faced them with his camera and the result is staggering.

The Seine Meets Paris

A poetic ode to the River Seine, Ivens' distinguished camera eye surveys its lively banks and step-stone canals with a vérité candor, a beguiling elan.

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.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.

The 11th Hour

A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.