Rain (1929 film)

Rain
Directed by	Mannus Franken Joris Ivens
Written by	Mannus Franken Joris Ivens
Music by	Lou Lichtveld
Cinematography	Joris Ivens
Edited by	Joris Ivens
Release date	14 December 1929
Running time	12 minutes
Country	Netherlands
Language	Dutch

Rain (Dutch: Regen) is a 1929 Dutch short documentary film directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens. It premiered on December 14, 1929, in the Amsterdam Filmliga’s theater, De Uitkijk.

Regen has four key elements that have cemented its place in documentary history: its place in the long career of director Joris Ivens, the Dutch Film Canon, the City Symphony film movement, and the history of avant-garde documentaries.

Joris Ivens lived from 1898 to 1989 and in that time created thirteen noteworthy documentaries, whose interrelation and evolution loosely model the trajectory of documentary film as a whole. Over his career, he made art films, commercial films, political documentaries, war (and indeed anti-war) documentaries. His final film, A Tale of the Wind, was an autobiographical piece contemplating the divide between realism and fantasy.

Additionally, Ivens was one of the inaugural voices of Dutch Film, establishing traditions in the form of content and formal effects that have continued to define films from the Netherlands. First among these is the painterly heritage of the Dutch. From the intimate realism of the Dutch Masters to Impressionism, Pointillism, and De Stijl, the Netherlands have a rich history of skilled and pioneering artists, including such household names as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and M. C. Escher. Ivens's attention to composition is demonstrative not only of his three-generation family history of photography, but of his national heritage as well. Dutch films are inward-looking, that is, they feature Dutch subjects, Dutch settings, and Dutch conflicts, to include a love-hate struggle with the elements that has been a part of Dutch culture as long as the canals and windmills on which the Netherlands depends.

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