Joris Ivens

1898 — 1989

The Dutch documentary filmmaker and photographer Joris Ivens spent seven decades directing cinema, eventually winning a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his outstanding contribution to the art form. Politically engaged, he used his work to critique Dutch colonialism and document shifts in society over several generations. Ivens played with the form, sometimes adding fictional passages into his documentaries, and was influenced by the avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century. Ivens died in 1989, having received the Order of the Netherlands Lion. A statue in his image can be found at the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris.