Ivens’ grand compilation film resembles an epic inter-continental communist response to Lorentz’s The River from a director by now blacklisted in the USA (despite having made the patriotic Power and the Land for its government). Funded by the World Federation of Trade Unions, and featuring its 1953 congress, with music from Shostakovich, lyrics from Brecht, and narration from (also blacklisted) Paul Robeson (Native Land), this allegorical documentary about the workers of the world symbolically unites them through six major world rivers: the Volga, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Amazon, and Yangtze.
Song of the Rivers
Lied der Ströme
Joris Ivens
1954
GDR
111’
