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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		New Earth Nieuwe Gronden 1933 / The Netherlands / B&W / 30 min / 35mm Director, Script: Joris Ivens Camera: Joris Ivens, Joop Huisken, Helen van Dongen, John Fernhout, Eli Lotar Editors: Joris Ivens, Helen van Dongen Music: Hanns Eisler; ballad by Julian Arendt and Ernst Busch, sung by Ernst Busch Commentary: Joris Ivens Production company: CAPI Amsterdam In 1930, the Zuiderzee Works episode in We Are Building had been expanded into the much longer film Zuiderzee. In 1934 Ivens used the same material, along with additional footage, to make another version: New Earth. This time, sustained by stirring music composed by Hanns Eisler and stronger, more compact editing, the film included an unmistakable political message. After the segment on land reclamation and the closing of the dyke, the film continues with images of economic crisis and poverty among laborers. Ivens opposes this to market speculation: while grain was dumped into the ocean to keep prices elevated, those workers who had helped reclaim land for agriculture were subsequently shown to be unemployed and starving. The closing of the dyke remains one of the strongest editing sequences in all of Ivens's work. 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