Dutch documentary filmmaker

Born in Nijmegen, The Netherlands on 18 November 1898, passed away in Paris on 28 June 1989.

Honorary title: ‘Friend of the Chinese People’

He made over 80 films in almost every continent and initiated or supported many organizations to found or develop a national film culture (in Holland, USA, China, Vietnam, Eastern-Europe, Cuba, Chili and Mali).

Read Joris Ivens compleet biography (PDF)

阅读Joris Ivens的完整个人资料

Ivens and China

Joris Ivens made his first film in China in 1938 called The 400 Million (in collaboration with photographer Robert Capa) in which footage can be seen of Mr. Zhou-Enlai and Mr. Zu De and the music can be heard of ‘The March of the Volunteers’ (text Tian Han), which later on became the National Anthem op the PRC. This documentary supported the Chinese people in their fight against the Japanese invading army.

Before Joris Ivens left China he gave his camera to the Y’anan Movie Group at the Red Army Basis, a key moment in film history. With this camera the first movies of this Chinese documentary movement were made. From 1956 on Joris Ivens was appointed adviser of the newly founded Chinese Newsreel and Documentary Film Studios in Beijing. He made – together with the students of this studio- a documentary called Before Spring in 1958.

In 1971 Prime-Minister Zhou-Enlai asked Mr. Ivens and his wife, Loridan-Ivens, to create a documentary about China, to show the world another image of this country, at the time when China started their ‘open windows’ policy towards the USA and the rest of the world.  This documentary evolved into a long film-series of 12 hours How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1979), seen worldwide by 250 million people. The first time ever in history that so many people around the world got acquainted with daily life of ordinary Chinese people. 

In 1986 Ivens and his wife started filming his film testament A Tale of the Wind (1988), a documentary about the cultural history of China and a personal reflection on his log life and film career.

Ivens received many awards like the Golden Palm in Cannes, the Golden Lion in Venice, the Golden Bridge in San Francisco, the Félix in Paris, the World Peace Award in Helsinki and the International Lenin Prize in Moscow.
His influence on Chinese film culture is well described by several film scholars, especially his influence on Chinese cameramen of the CNDFS and the Fifth and Sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers. Mr. Fu Hongxing, director of the Chinese Film Archive recollected in a  a speech delivered at the seminar ’50 years of Joris Ivens in China’ at the Beijing Normal university (November 2008): ‘A tall slim old man, with his silver hair fluttering in the breeze, was often accompanied by a red-haired short woman. The images of these two laowai (foreigners) who were very dazzling in Beijing twenty years ago still remain engraved in my mind. The elegant temperament of the old man corresponds with my ideal image of a great artist.

Many Joris’ Chinese friends are still living around me. I often meet them and talk about that “flying Dutchman”. Joris’ story can be made into a book. Actually it seems to me that Joris has never left us. I can feel his breath and touch him. What he has brought to Chinese people is invaluable. Qian Xiaozhang, former CNDFS director, recollects the first time he met Joris in 1938 in Wuhan, China, “I was deeply touched by his (Joris Ivens) passionate sincere emotions and agreeable attitudes towards his Chinese fellows of the same profession in their primary meeting. It was the first time that I saw a foreigner who was so kind to Chinese people. Joris is very unlike those foreigners I frequently met in the Bund, who lifted up their horns and showed disdain to our Chinese people. He is our real friend.” Today the techniques imparted by Joris to Chinese documentary directors are still widely applied by many documentary working staff in hundreds of TV stations.’