The 1920s saw a number avant-garde artists producing short, experimental films. One of the more famous of these is "Rain", a 1929 short by Joris Ivens.
Ivens' earliest films were strictly aesthetic exercises. He began as a lyrical or observational poet but slowly drifted toward social realism and then activism. Ivens says this himself in interviews, in which he describes "Rain" as being "without social content", a fact which he "would later seek to rectify". In this regard, the film is primarily concerned with observing as raindrops envelop the city of Amsterdam. Humans are kept at a distance and Ivens focuses more on umbrellas, streets, puddles, buildings and rivers; the movement of water and the slow dampening of a city. This will seem trite to modern audiences, but cinema was in its infancy when "Rain" was released. Many well regarded critics, cinematographers and artists of the era championed it dearly (it was oft compared to Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera", released months prior), including Vsevolod Pudovkin, one of the fathers of film theory.
Today, copies of "Rain" tend to be saddled with modern soundtracks. Most of these are best muted. At its best, the film conveys well the quality of rain, the transience of Nature and the smell/texture of water on stone. 100 years ago it was viewed as a work lyrical and transcendent, today, no doubt, as something primitive and thin.
Not many people know of Joris Iven. He'd make a series of documentaries in the 1920s, before being hired in the 1940s to make propaganda pieces for Dutch colonialist interests. Instead he'd use their money to make "Indonesia Calling", a film which assaulted the Neatherlands' role in Indonesia. His subsequent films focused on unionists, Belgian miners, worker strikes, the Soviet Union's Five Year Plan, the Spanish Civil War, Indonesia's attempts to shrug off the Imperial powers and China's resistance to Japanese invasion. Along the way, he'd become involved with various communists, radical left-wingers and thinkers, as well as Bertolt Brecht, Hans Eisler, Robert Oppenheimer and the great Herbert Marcuse. Throughout much of his life, Iven would be assaulted by people in power; the FBI classified him as being "dangerous" and "a possible Soviet agent", he'd be hounded by Netherlands' Intelligence Service, the Dutch wanted him jailed, frequently he'd have his equipment stolen or "delayed" and he was famously banned from entering several countries by none other than General Douglas MacArthur. He died in 1989.
7.5/10 – See "A Tale of the Wind".
Ivens' earliest films were strictly aesthetic exercises. He began as a lyrical or observational poet but slowly drifted toward social realism and then activism. Ivens says this himself in interviews, in which he describes "Rain" as being "without social content", a fact which he "would later seek to rectify". In this regard, the film is primarily concerned with observing as raindrops envelop the city of Amsterdam. Humans are kept at a distance and Ivens focuses more on umbrellas, streets, puddles, buildings and rivers; the movement of water and the slow dampening of a city. This will seem trite to modern audiences, but cinema was in its infancy when "Rain" was released. Many well regarded critics, cinematographers and artists of the era championed it dearly (it was oft compared to Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera", released months prior), including Vsevolod Pudovkin, one of the fathers of film theory.
Today, copies of "Rain" tend to be saddled with modern soundtracks. Most of these are best muted. At its best, the film conveys well the quality of rain, the transience of Nature and the smell/texture of water on stone. 100 years ago it was viewed as a work lyrical and transcendent, today, no doubt, as something primitive and thin.
Not many people know of Joris Iven. He'd make a series of documentaries in the 1920s, before being hired in the 1940s to make propaganda pieces for Dutch colonialist interests. Instead he'd use their money to make "Indonesia Calling", a film which assaulted the Neatherlands' role in Indonesia. His subsequent films focused on unionists, Belgian miners, worker strikes, the Soviet Union's Five Year Plan, the Spanish Civil War, Indonesia's attempts to shrug off the Imperial powers and China's resistance to Japanese invasion. Along the way, he'd become involved with various communists, radical left-wingers and thinkers, as well as Bertolt Brecht, Hans Eisler, Robert Oppenheimer and the great Herbert Marcuse. Throughout much of his life, Iven would be assaulted by people in power; the FBI classified him as being "dangerous" and "a possible Soviet agent", he'd be hounded by Netherlands' Intelligence Service, the Dutch wanted him jailed, frequently he'd have his equipment stolen or "delayed" and he was famously banned from entering several countries by none other than General Douglas MacArthur. He died in 1989.
7.5/10 – See "A Tale of the Wind".