Une Histoire de vent
France,
1988, 80 min
Shown in 1990
CREDITS
- dir
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Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan
- prod
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Marceline Loridan
- cam
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Thierry Arbogast, Jacques Loiseleux
- editor
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Genevieve Louveau
- cast
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Joris Ivens, Liu Zhuang, Liu Guillian
- source
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Unifrance, 9200 W. Sunset Blvd. #540, Los Angeles, CA 90069,USA, FAX: 213-274-9257
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COMMENTS
Marceline Loridan attended the screening.
OTHER
Joris Ivens' latest and final film was made when the renowned director was already 90 years old. It is a brilliant conclusion to a career spanning the better part of European film history. Ivens' great contribution to the documentary cinema began in the early ’20s and continued with undiminished dedication. His life-long preoccupation with issues of social and political evolution were matched by adventurous aesthetic explorations. A Tale of the Wind is an original, innovative and very playful film. Its story, largely autobiographical, recounts an old filmmaker's trip to China at the end of his life in search of a wind he intends to film. Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan had filmed several documentaries in China during the ’70s. However, A Tale of the Wind is a departure from their usual work as it leads us into a world of myths, legends, and metaphors. In the film, which features Ivens himself, a filmmaker who has been touched by the winds of history for almost all of the 20th century, aims his camera in an attempt to record the universal wisdom derived from unaffected observation. At 90, another wind is blowing him. Is this a pursuit of the impossible? An ultimate challenge to himself? Or simply the path leading us to a deeply beautiful swan song at the very end of a life spent in exposing the plight and suffering of the common man?
—Dimitri Eipides, Festival of Festivals
FACTOID #99
Philadelphia-born, British-raised director Richard Lester, who shot the trippy Petulia in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, directed our Opening Night film and attended the Festival two years in a row, accompanying 1966’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum and 1967’s How I Won the War.
