Marceline. A Woman. A Century

A portrait of the strong-minded writer and filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018). As a girl, she survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, after which she had to find herself as a woman in freedom. Her approach was radical and unconventional, she says. As she approaches the age of 90, in essence she appears unchanged; her life simply moves a bit more slowly.

In her Paris apartment, she serves her guests coffee or vodka. They look back on memories of Marceline herself, the history they have experienced together, and how they view it today: the Algerian War of Independence, for example, or the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution in China—momentous events about which Marceline made inspired films, initially with Jean-Pierre Sergent, later with her second husband Joris Ivens, the legendary Dutch documentarian. In the second part, the consummate Parisian Marceline—small, slender, carefully dressed and with bright red hair—looks back wistfully and lovingly over her years with Ivens. Her recollections are illustrated by archive footage from their films such as 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968) and How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976).

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