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Rain
Regen
Joris Ivens films Amsterdam during a rain shower. This poetic city symphony, a “cine-poem” per the film’s opening title cards, shifts moods, following the gradual transformation from sunny Amsterdam streets to raindrops in the canals and on windows, umbrellas, and trams, until it clears and the sun breaks through once again.
Rain became Ivens’s breakthrough film as an avant-garde artist. It took him over two years to capture enough rain showers across different locations in the city to compose this film. In 1932, Lou Lichtveld provided sound for the film.
Bio Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens (1898-1989) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. His father owned a photography shop in Nijmegen, and with the help of his employees, young Ivens made his first short film. De wigwam featured his parents, brothers, and sisters. From the end of the 1920s, he became one of the vital figures in the Dutch avant-garde with influential films such as De brug and Regen. He also founded Studio Joris Ivens, a cradle of experimental film in the early 1930s, where young, enthusiastic filmmakers found a home. He later made important political documentaries, including Misère au Borinage (1934), Valparaiso (1963), and Far from Vietnam (1967).
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- This film was #62 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025