A lyrical portrait of Amsterdam and its changing appearance during a rain-shower.

The film is a documentary portraying a struggle as man tries to subdue nature. To prevent flooding and for purposes of land reclamation, the people of the Netherlands struggle and succeed in building a breaker, thereby eliminating the wild inland body of water once known as the Zuider Zee (now called Ijsselmeer).

A commissioned documentary short showing the effort over several years to close off a shallow bay in the northwest Netherlands from the rest of the North Sea by engineering a dyke, with an area later turned into land after drainage.

Documentary celebrating the 10th anniversary of the General Dutch Construction Workers Union, providing a multifaceted view of the union and depicting the many construction activities of its members. Some parts were also shown separately.

A poetic industrial short that follows a radio from molten glass to finished set: glassblowers shape valves, conveyors and assembly lines build chassis, cabinets, and speakers, engineers test and prototype—ending on a playful stop-motion “dance” of loudspeakers.

The Hefbrug may not be a remarkably beautiful bridge, but through a mix of close-ups, long shots, bird’s eye views and low angles, Joris Ivens conveys a sense of the bridge’s structure, its intricate mechanisms and ways of operating, the way it fits into the overall transport infrastructure and therefore the immense importance of this bridge for the whole city of Rotterdam.