beforenext
Wigwam (Shining Ray) The Bridge Breakers Rain We Are Building Philips Radio Creosote Komsomol (Song of Heroes) New Earth Borinage The Spanish Earth The 400 Million Power and the Land Indonesia Calling The First Years Song of the Rivers The Seine Meets Paris Before Spring Italy Is Not a Poor Country Travel Notebook A Valparaiso The Mistral Pour le Mistral Far from Vietnam The 17th Parallel How Yukong Moved the Mountains A Tale of the Wind Magnitogorsk, Forging the New Man		Song of the Rivers Das Lied der Strome 1954 / GDR / B&W / 90 min / 35mm Director: Joris Ivens Script: Vladimir Pozner, Joris Ivens Camera: Anatoli Kloschin, Sacha Vierny, Erich Nitzschmann, Maximilian Scheer Editor: Ella Ensink Music: Dmitri Shostakovitch; songs written by Bertolt Brecht and Semion Kirsanov, sung by Ernst Busch (German version) and Paul Robeson (English version) Commentary: Vladimir Pozner; spoken by Ernst Busch (German version), Alex McCrindle (English version) Producer: Hans Wegner Production company: DEFA-Dokumentarfilm Commissioned by: World Federation of Trade Unions One of the biggest documentary film productions ever attempted is about workers' movements alongside six of the world's major rivers: the Volga, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Amazon, and Yangtze. The film was shot in many different countries by different film crews, and all the material was sent to the DEFA studio in Berlin. Under the supervision of Joris Ivens, Ella Ensink edited the material into a compilation film, in which some footage from Borinage (1934) and New Earth (1934) was also included. The film starts as a poetic portrait of life and work along the six featured rivers, but then is dominated in the second part by images of the World Trade Union Congress, giving the latter part of the film the appearance of mere propaganda. The film brings together many great artists. In addition to Ivens as director and Vladimir Pozner, who helped write the script, Shostakovitch wrote the music, Bertolt Brecht wrote the lyrics which were sung by Paul Robeson and Ernst Busch, and Picasso designed the cover for the accompanying pamphlet. A TOPICS A Bird's Eye View of a Documentary Career HELEN VAN DONGEN Kees Bakker beforenext COPYRIGHT:Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Organizing Committee