From 18 to 20 November 2008 the Beijing Normal University's School of Media and
Arts, the Central Studio for Newsreel and Documentaries and China Film Archive
organised an international academic conference titled "50 years of Joris Ivens
and China". The life of Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens was closely
linked to China over his long career. Ivens first came to in China in 1938.
Over the next 50 years he shot four films about China. All became classics of
documentary film. This year marks the 110th anniversary of Ivens' birth.
An wrapped up in Beijing Thursday. The organisers Zhang Tongdao and Sun
Hongyun invited me for a talk in which I compared two films: one by Joris Ivens
and the other by Fumio Kamei. This has now become an article, published in
issue 3.1 of
Studies in Documentary
Film.
In 1938 both Joris Ivens and Fumio Kamei went to China to make a documentary
about the war that was going on there between China and Japan. Ivens,
sympathizing with the Chinese people, made
The 400 Million. Kamei made
Fighting Soldiers, intended as propaganda for the home front. Two
films thus on the same war, but with opposed views. What does this mean for the
representation and the interpretation of reality? Sketching a hermeneutic
approach, this article tries to develop some possible answers to this
question.
‘THEY ARE LIKE HORSES WITH BLINDERS ON’ One war, two views: Joris Ivens and
Fumio Kamei, China, 1938 in
Studies in Documentary Film 3.1,
Intellect, Bristol, 2009, pp. 19-33.
