Philips Radio

As soon as Ivens came back from his first trip to the USSR, he was contacted by the advertising office of Philips-Radio. The opportunity to earn a lot of money, the huge investment in the project and the guarantee of a free rein convinced him to accept the direction of an advertising film about the work and radio production in the Eindhoven Philips factory. But the trip to the USSR had changed him: “I thought my task was to focus on men at work, rather than on the machines and their amazing technical performances”. Ivens went far beyond the demands of his clients, binding together aesthetic research and social criticism of dull factory work, so much so that his backers didn't let the film be distributed. Music and factory noises make it the first sound film in Holland, based on the alternation of images and sounds. The title Symphonie industrielle was coined by the French critics after the first screening in Paris. Although it was not widely seen at the time, it is one of Ivens’ classics today.