Siamo italiani - Septemberwind

Alexander J. Seiler

Siami italiani

"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. Siamo Italiani marked an ideological and stylistic change in Swiss filmmaking and now cinema was to be seized upon as a critical tool and means of personal expression. Seiler revealed the Swiss as more than a nation that hid behind their banal defensiveness and hypocritical neutralism".
Johann Maree

Septemberwind

Forty years after SIAMO ITALIANI, the author devotes himself to several of the “foreign workers” who had flocked to Switzerland from southern Italy. The young couple of once-upon-a-time have retired and are now back in their homeland in Apulia enjoying the fruits of their working days abroad – and also yearning for a visit from their children who live in Switzerland. It is not only the second generation Italians in Switzerland who feel as if they are “half-Swiss, half-Italian”: Some of the former migrants, though they have returned to Apulia, find themselves most often “in Switzerland” in their thoughts. “I am constantly missing something”, says the 40-year old Anna. “Distance and desire tear at the heart” – is how the 65-year-old Tonuccio sums up the life of the migrants.

"It’s in a train that connects Zurich and Lecce that the subject of Septemberwind takes shape straight away. This is the train of migrations, of uprooting, of joyful reunions, of tearful farewells. It links North to South, separates rich and poor countries. Some forty-five years ago,numerous Italian workers from the underprivileged regions of the South came to instal themselves in Switzerland. Alexander Seiler dedicated SIAMO ITALIANI to them, it is a classic of the Swiss cinema. The film maker recorded the conditions in which they were received and their integration into the working world. Today retired, these workers have returned to their country of origin where they experience a second uprooting. After the experience of living in Switzerland, they have difficulty in recovering their footing in their own country. Their families are dispersed, the children of the second generation cosily integrated in Switzerland. They scarcely envisage leaving their comfortable setting, except perhaps for the holidays.On the other hand, a German Swiss woman follows her husband back to Italy, a young man goes south to take up an apprenticeship. Each story has its share of difficulties and suffering, between two languages, two ways of life, two imaginary perspectives.
The few scenes in black and white of SIAMO ITALIANI, encrusted in the film like scattered fragments of memory, contrast in a spectacular fashion with the pictures shot today. Colour stigmatizes the outward signs of social success. The houses built in Italy as a result of their years of hard work are certainly spacious and comfortable, but they will always be too large for the families which will never live there together.
Alexander Seiler gets warmly attached to the destiny of a handful of people and retains some lucid and disillusioned thoughts. Distance and absence instil gnawing, haunting sadnesses. Seiler’s uprooted heroes are the unwilling yet inevitable witnesses of a flourishing era in the economy of western Europe, their collective destiny is the reflection of present-day migrations. These phenomena on a world-wide scale are always synonymous with dashed expectations and wounded identities. The final song of SEPTEMBERWIND has the accents of an existential lament.
Jean Perret, Visions du Réel

Alexander J. Seiler

Zürich 1928. He studied Literature, Philosophy and Sociology in Basel, Paris and Munich. In the year 1961, he started working in the movie industry, working for too many years in collaboration with Rob Gnant and June Kovach. Founding member of the Swiss Film Centre and Executive Secretary of the Association of Swiss Filmmakers. He was very active in film politics, developing also an important role as a film critic. Alexander J. Seiler is considered as the maximum exponent of the new wave of Swiss filmmakers from the 60´s, shooting films which arouse the social responsability and consciousness. His short film IN WECHSELNDEM GEFÄLLE won the Golden Palm to the Best Short Film within the Cannes Festival in the year 1963.

2010 GEYSIR UND GOLIATH
2002 SEPTEMBERWIND
1990 PALAVER, PALAVER
1982 LUDWIG HOHL - EIN FILM IN FRAGMENTEN
1980 DIE SIEBEN TODSÜNDEN
1979 DER HANDKUSS - MÄRCHEN AUS DER SCHWEIZ
1976 DIE FRÜCHTE DER ARBEIT
1974 WER EINMAL LÜGT ODER VICTOR UND DIE ERZIEHUNG
1971 UNSER LEHRER
1968 FIFTEEN
1967 MUSIKWETTBEWERB
1967 VIA ZÜRICH
1966 IM LAUFDE DES JAHRES
1966 MIXTUREN
1964 SIAMO ITALIANI
1964 ENTWICKLUNGSHILFE
1962 IM WECHSELNDEN GEFÄLLE
1961 AUF WEISSEM GRUND