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Swiss documentary films
 In one of the world's countless crisis areas, surrounded by suffering, death, violence and chaos, photographer James Nachtwey searches for the picture he thinks he can publish. |
 The film is a touching, poetic exploration of the relationship between mind, body and sound, and a cinematic journey to the borders of communication. | ||
 Johana, a young actress and her self-made doll Bouton attempt to prevail over a dangerous disease and manage its severity with humour. |
 People from 20 different nations use the 148 plots in the allotment gardens in Bern. With their love for Mother Earth, they form a microcosm filled with dreams, seclusion, homesickness, joy and conflicts. | ||
 The filmmaker travels to the mysterious land of the “poor souls”. He visits eyewitnesses in rural areas of Central Switzerland. They offer their account of mystifying experiences in connection with the afterlife. |
 Director Kappeler returns to the subject of his past film DIE BALLADE VOM SCHREIBEN (1995), about poet Gerhard Meier. Now that documentary is viewed as an essential introduction into the poet’s work-. | ||
 The film depicts the traditional folk music of Switzerland, portraying the musicians who perform it, musicians who are still intimately allied with their cultural heritage in central Switzerland and the Canton of Appenzell. |
 Since seven decades Anna Halprin, a pioneer of dance from the US, in her work and performances searches for answers to the question: How can we closely link life and dance? | ||
 Six months before the Twin Towers attacks in New York, 2001, two huge Buddha statues were blown up in the remote area of Bamiyantal in Afghanistan. |
 A kind of road movie across Europa. From the Swiss Alps to eastern Poland, from Stromboli to Iceland. Always following the scenery's magically charged contours. Immersing yourself, letting yourself be infected, then travelling on. | ||
 Max Frisch was the last big Swiss intellectual widely respected as a “voice” in its own right – a character hardly found today. |
 SIAMO ITALIANI (THE ITALIANS) was 'the thunderbolt that rudely awakened Swiss cinema from the slumbers in which it had been since the end of the War'. Seiler's cameras descended from the lofty Alpine peaks into the streets of everyday life. | ||
 An immersion documentary which, without any comment or interview, will observe the operation of a Swiss centre where asylum seekers are received and selected. On a more general note, this film will raise the question about selective immigration in Europe | |||
 Elena has the Down Syndrome. Netherless she is attending a normal primary school in a small town in Switzerland. Bernard Weber follows this school and shows us how integrative education can be both adventourous and enriching. |
 Swiss artist Markus Raetz's works amaze as though they were created by a magician: poetic, ironic and often erotic. His drawings, pictures and sculptures are constructed illusions that question our ways of seeing. | ||
 Frei's film takes a humorous and laconic view of the way billionaires depart our planet earth to travel into outer space for fun. |
 A fascinating world of culture and humanity at the heart of which the literary text is essential. 5 “elephants” = 5 great books by Dostoyevsky. | ||
 A ninety minute celluloid improvisation with Fred Frith and Friends. |
 “Where's the ghost town?”, asked the little boy to the theme park attendant. “It's there, right there. But it has been bombed… Do you want to see it?” It is with these words that the film begins - an impressionist journey through a devastated Gaza. | ||
 The live of peasents in the canton of Uri. The Kempf family moves ten times a year between three houses. |
 Is there life after death? To prove it, Céline, a spiritual healer, takes up the challenge of giving mediumship sessions live in front of the camera to clients and scientists who don't believe in it! | ||
 Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. |
 Danny made himself a name for his fresh and uncompromising creations all over the world and is "at the cutting edge of European Customizing" .The film goes back in time when the protagonist was a Motocross and Freestyle Motocross youngstar. | ||
 Liechti's film tells the incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of Switzerland. |
 “Everything is in motion – inertia doesn’t exist!” Jean Tinguely cast a spell over the public with his works his entire life | ||
 Did you know that swiss dancers are leadin step dancers? A fast-paced film about people whose feet are their primitive and powerful instrument of artistic expression. |
 A musical journey through the world of tones, sounds and noises: with Manfred Eicher, the outstanding producer of contemporary music. The film traces his life at concerts, in recording studios, in back rooms and off the beaten path. | ||
 Extraordinary visual experiences and surprising connections create a mosaic that encompasses Switzerland and the Sahel. Continually shifting perspectives, self-evident links between cows and milk, market and progress, are set in motion. |
 Of cheering sounds and other singings, a film about that most primal of instruments: the human voice. | ||
 Cuno Amiet was born in 1868 and died 50 years ago – yet seen today many of his pictures have a contemporary edge. Amiet was a Swiss pioneer of modern painting along with Ferdinand Hodler and Giovanni Giacometti. |
 The legendary film about the zurich youth movement of the 80s is a pamphlet and a document at the same time of a liberation of an entire generation. Street battles, naked demonstrations, punk music, living autonomy. | ||
 No one knows the day or the hour. When illness strikes, accompanied by pain and physical decline, there we are, faced with death. The outlook on what remains of life appears dismal and full of anguish. |
 On the day of Jo “Seppi” Siffert’s funeral in 1971, 50,000 people converged in the streets of his hometown, Fribourg. Even today he is still considered to be one of the ten best racing drivers of all times. | ||
 A long-term documentary about two violent teenagers. The two directors observed Tim and Gibran between their 16th and 18th birthday. |
 A unique opportunity to experience the last remaining mountain haymakers in the Muotatal, a valley in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland. | ||
 The discovery of a huge Celtic place of worship on a hill in the Swiss canton of Vaud is a prime opportunity for archeologists to explore our ancestors’ religious beliefs. |
 A documentary about the French writer Jean Genet and his relations with the Palestinian revolution. One day after the September 1982 massacre at the refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Genet visits the camp. | ||
 For artist Jean Odermatt, the Gotthard is both the source and the driving force of an obsession. The film by Iwan Schumacher makes use of this energy in telling the story of this obsession. |
 Schaub and Schindhelm’s documentary follows two Swiss star architects on two very different projects: the national stadium for the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008 and a city area in the provincial town of Jinhua, China. | ||
 It is summer 1937 and spectators are lined up along the streets of a small village called Lucens. Racing cyclists pass through the village at top speed. The children at that time, who are grandparents today, recollect… |
 Schmid's preoccupations with opera, theatricality, romanticism, and decay receive perhaps their loveliest, most poignant treatment in this remarkable documentary. | ||
 One of the oldest cultural forms of human existence is that of the shepherd. In its essence it is of economic interest even today, and also embodies a distinct lifestyle and worldview. |
 KILI RADIO is an independent radio station which broadcasts from the poorest Indian Reservation in the USA. It was founded in the 1970s by activists of the Indian resistance movement called “Voice of the Lakota Nation”. | ||
 “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product,” says the King of Bhutan. But can happiness be ordered by decree? We accompany seven Swiss musicians in this mountainous country in the Himalayas. |
 Hugo Koblet was the first international cycling star of the post-war period. The son of a baker from Zurich, he was a stylist on the bicycle and in life, a heartthrob for many women. Koblet experienced a meteoric rise and won the Giro d’Italia in 1950. | ||
 He is someone in a hurry to leave, to get going. From his village, Degen, in the Grisons, to Spain. |
 Out of an extensive pool of 75 hours of material shot with depression sufferers - as well as 14 interviews with health professionals. Accompagnies the film SOULSHADOWS. | ||
 A moving image of the palliative-care nursing home Rive-Neuve on Lake Leman, where the prospect of death is handled with humanity. |
 Swiss Migros supermarket chain founder Gottlieb Duttweiler was a man of great character: by disposition a democrat, but a dictator by temperament. |
