Instructional film about the former biggest harbour in the world, with a hybrid format. Well known Ivens themes are revisited, like The Flying Dutchman in the fiction part of the film, who returns to the modern day Rotterdam, that has recovered very well after the devastating bombardments in WW II.

Much more than a rote history of the Port of Rotterdam, Joris Ivens & Chris Marker’s delightful short (with two styles, two sets of fingerprints) invokes the myth of the “Flying Dutchman,” reflecting back on their own anthropological undertaking with this curious, unexpected digression.