Résumés
Abstract
This essay reconsiders several documentary projects in film and photography that sought to articulate utopian possibilities at the height of the Cold War, when ideological imperatives constrained artists of all political persuasions. The central art work is Joris Ivens’ Song of the Rivers (1954), which is analysed and then juxtaposed to Edward Steichen’s Family of Man (1955) photography exhibition. In seeking to reclaim the textual complexity and dialectics of Ivens’ work, this analysis looks at the personal narratives that are threaded through the film’s epic aspirations. Involving Ivens and Paul Robeson, these narratives mobilize the trope of the river that recurs in both Soviet film and Robeson’s performances. Ivens and Robeson both returned to, and so refigured, elements of Song of the Rivers in two much smaller and more intimate film projects : Ivens’ La Seine a rencontré Paris ( The Seine Meets Paris, 1957) and Robeson’s Brücke über den Ozean ( Bridge Over the Ocean, 1958), made with Earl Robinson.
Résumé
Cet article porte un regard nouveau sur certains projets documentaires, cinématographiques et photographiques, qui tentaient d’articuler des éventualités utopiques au plus fort de la guerre froide, au moment où des impératifs idéologiques muselaient les artistes, quelles que soient leurs convictions politiques. L’oeuvre au centre de cette étude est Song of the Rivers (1954) de Joris Ivens, qui est analysée et ensuite mise en parallèle avec l’exposition de photographies d’Edward Steichen, Family of Man (1955). Afin de mesurer la complexité textuelle et la dialectique propre au film d’Ivens, cette analyse se penche sur les récits personnels, tissés à même les aspirations épiques du film. Ces récits, concernant Ivens et Paul Robeson, mobilisent la figure du fleuve qui apparaît à la fois dans le cinéma soviétique et les performances de Robeson. Ivens et Robeson ont tous deux repris, et par là-même re-figuré, des éléments de Song of the Rivers dans le cadre de deux projets cinématographiques de moins grande envergure et plus intimistes : pour Ivens, La Seine a rencontré Paris (1957) et, pour Robeson, Brücke über den Ozean ( Bridge Over the Ocean, 1958), réalisé avec Earl Robinson.
Parties annexes
Bibliographical references
- Baker, 1987 : Houston A. Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1987.
- Bakker, 1999 : Kees Bakker (ed.), Joris Ivens and the Documentary Context, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1999.
- Barnouw, 1974 : Erik Barnouw, Documentary : A Short History of the Non-Fiction Film, New York :, Oxford University Press, 1974.
- Barsam, 1973 : Richard Meran Barsam, Nonfiction Film : A Critical History, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co.,1973.
- Böker, 1981 : Carlos Böker, Joris Ivens, Film-Maker : Facing Reality, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1981.
- Buck-Morss, 2002 : Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe : The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002.
- de Certeau, 1984 : Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984.
- Devarrieux, 1979 : Claire Devarrieux, Entretiens avec Joris Ivens, Paris, Albatros, 1979.
- Duberman, 1988 : Martin Bauml Duberman, Paul Robeson, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- Ellis, 1989 : Jack C. Ellis, The Documentary Idea : A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1989.
- Ewen, 1967 : Frederic Ewen, Bertolt Brecht : His Life, His Art and His Times, New York, The Citadel Press, 1967.
- Gordon and Robinson, 1998 : Eric A. Gordon and Earl Robinson, Ballad of an American : The Autobiography of Earl Robinson, Lanham, Scarecrow Press, 1998.
- Gunning, 2002 : Tom Gunning, “Joris Ivens Filmmaker of the Twentieth Century, of the Netherlands and the World,” in Stufkens (ed.), 2002a.
- Hayman, 1983 : Ronald Hayman, Brecht : A Biography, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1983.
- Hughes, 1958 : Langston Hughes, The Langston Hughes Reader, New York, George Braziller Inc., 1958.
- Ivens, 1927 : Joris Ivens, “Filmtechniek,” Filmliga, September 1927.
- Ivens, 1969 : Joris Ivens, The Camera and I, New York, International Publishers, 1969.
- Ivens, 1999 : Joris Ivens, “Repeated and Organized Scenes in Documentary Film” [1953], in Bakker (ed.), 1999.
- Ivens and Pozner, 1957 : Joris Ivens and Vladimir Pozner, Lied der Ströme, Berlin, Verlag Tribüne, 1957.
- Jacobs, 1979 : Lewis Jacobs (ed.), The Documentary Tradition, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1979.
- Jordan, 2002 : Günter Jordan, “Bridges Over Rivers, Borders and Oceans : Paul Robeson and Joris Ivens,” Newsmagazine, European Foundation Joris Ivens, no. 8, 2002, pp. 18-19.
- Kelley, 2002 : Robin Kelley, Freedom Dreams : The Black Radical Imagination, Boston, Beacon Press, 2002.
- Lagny, 1999 : Michèle Lagny, “ La Seine a rencontré Paris and the Documentary in France in the Fifties,” in Bakker (ed.), 1999.
- Legotien, 1963 : Hélène Legotien, “Le grand documentariste contemporain,” Esprit, July 1955, reprinted in Abraham Zalzman, 1963.
- Musser, 2002 : Charles Musser, “Despite All Barriers : Paul Robeson & Song of the Rivers,” in Stufkens (ed.), 2002a.
- Nichols, 1981 : Bill Nichols, Ideology and the Image : Social Representations in the Cinema and other Media, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1981.
- Nichols, 1991 : Bill Nichols, Representing Reality : Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991.
- Pudovkin, 1931 : Vsevolod Pudovkin, “Joris Ivens,” Rote Fahne, 17 March 1931.
- Rampersad, 1986 : Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1, 1902-1941. I Too Sing America, New York, Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Robeson, Jr., 2001 : Paul Robeson, Jr., The Undiscovered Paul Robeson : Journey, 1898-1939, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 2001.
- Sandeen, 1955 : Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition : The Family of Man and 1950s America, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
- Schoots, 2000 : Hans Schoots, Living Dangerously : A Biography of Joris Ivens, Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 2000.
- Seton, 1979 : Marie Seton, “Basil Wright’s Song of Ceylon,” in Jacobs (ed.), 1979.
- Shohat and Stam, 1994 : Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentricism : Multiculturalism and the Media, London, Routledge, 1994.
- Steichen, 1986 : Edward Steichen, The Family of Man, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1986.
- Stufkens, 2002a : André Stufkens (ed.), Cinema Without Borders : The Films of Joris Ivens : A Catalog, Nijmegen, European Foundation Joris Ivens, 2002.
- Stufkens, 2002b : André Stufkens, “Lust for Life : An Introduction to Joris Ivens and the 20th Century,” in Stufkens (ed.), 2002a.
- Unsigned, 1955a : “Les infortunes de la liberté,” Positif, no. 13, 1955.
- Unsigned, 1955b : “Register of Releases,” Film User, Vol. 9, no. 105, 1955.
- Véronneau, 1984 : Pierre Véronneau, “Children of Vertov in the Land of Brecht,” in Waugh (ed.), 1984.
- Waugh, 1984 : Thomas Waugh (ed.), “Show Us Life” : Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary, Metuchen, Scarecrow Press, 1984.
- Winston, 1995 : Brian Winston, Claiming the Real : The Documentary Film Revisited, London, British Film Institute, 1995.
- Zalzman, 1963 : Abraham Zalzman, Joris Ivens, Paris, Seghers, 1963.