Valparaiso

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.

Midi Première

Midi Première is a French variety show presented by Danièle Gilbert, directed by Jacques Pierre and broadcast from January 6, 1975 until January 1, 1982 on TF1. The program was generally broadcast between 12:15 p.m. and 12:55 p.m., then giving way to the 1:00 p.m. TV news. However, the broadcast schedule could change, depending on the guests, and the setting where the recording of the program was shot. Certain performances by artists who have become cult like the one where Ringo jostles with a demonstrator in interpretation (1977), that of Dalida with the title There is always a song with the soundtrack that does not start, twice, at the right speed (1978), Claude François and his Clodettes, who, in the provinces, are unable to join "the set" in order to interpret his song, the latter being taken by the crowd of delirious fans (summer 1977) . The group Supertramp performed there with the title "Dreamer" on March 8, 1975.

Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes

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.

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.

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.

Zuiderzeewerken

This documentary documents the construction of the Afsluitdijk, the massive hydraulic engineering project that sealed off the Zuiderzee from the North Sea. Filmed over several years, it focuses on the labor required to build the dike and the final closing of the last gap in 1929.

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.

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. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

A Tale of the Wind

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.