Nieuwe gronden

“Before breaking with Holland, I had a film to finish, or more precisely, to transform : Zuiderzee ; this film, on the construction and drainage of the great dyke at Zuiderzee, which I had begun in 1930 and continued to work on as and when work advanced, began to take real shape after one and a half hour of editing which related the struggle of the Man and the See… But in ten years the world had changed… It was panic in 1934… Zuiderzee became Nouvelle Terre, a shorter, more dramatic film charged with a political significance which derived from history itself.” (Joris Ivens ou la Mémoire d’un regard)