Before Spring/Lettres de Chine

Before Spring is a three-part lyric documentary: Winter, shot in Mongolia, Before Spring and Spring Holiday shot on the banks of the Yangtze. Using highly anti-naturalistic colours, with a prevalence of green, Ivens goes back to a theme dear to him: the contrast between man and nature, in both contemporary progress and persisting old traditions. The film, which offers a poetic view of the Chinese land and seasons, has no political aim. It was realized in Peking as part of a training course for young Chinese film-makers that had already invited Ivens as a professor and director in 1955.