A Tale of the Wind

In their final film, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens find a playful balance between fiction and documentary. At the beginning of the film, Ivens himself elucidates the story as follows: "At the end of the 19th century, the Old Man, the protagonist of this story, was born in a country where people went to extremes to tame the sea and control the wind. With his camera in hand, he filmed the stormy history of his time. When he is 90, this survivor of documented world wars leaves for China. He has conceived the insane plan to film the invisible wind." In the film, Ivens plays himself: an aging filmmaker trying to capture the wind. The result is an allegorical fairytale in which numerous characters from Chinese mythology clash with excerpts from Ivens's rich oeuvre and quotations from by French illusionist and filmmaker George Méliès, in which Ivens himself suddenly has the starring role.