Discoveries from Switzerland World Cinema

A short film with a discussion about the different languages in switzerland among friends.

Presented across three screens, Lungenflügel (Lobe of the Lung) 2009 is an immersive video installation, lasting just over fifteen minutes. It depicts a luxurious valley in which the two main characters, a naked woman and a pig, wander. The human and the animal are put on the same plane, each appearing on one of the facing screenings, left and right of the central projection. The woman crawls on all fours, eating apples straight from the grass, in a choreography that very closely emulates the movements of the swine. As the work progresses, the footage becomes more abstract, filmed partly underwater in hues of vibrant red and partly in fields of brightly coloured tulips.

Two wooden dolls are having sex on a sandpaper. By constant change of the positions they sand themselves off by rubbing the floor. The mood varies between wrestling and amorous play. Finally the love act turns into a race against time.

British singer Lisa Stansfield performs at the Baloise Session music festival in Basel, Switzerland on 27 October 2014.

A sociopathic street lamp has his donuts stolen by the Uzbek mob. Filled with rage he plots to reclaim his stolen property.

She scrolls through profiles on a dating app. After meticulously preparing the meeting place, a man arrives.

A strict examination process regulates the population’s meat consumption: those who want to eat meat must kill an animal. Young reporter Elie sets out to document the process at the slaughterhouse. However, only those who participate are allowed in. Elie must confront the act of killing.

“Histoires sans lion” tells stories in fragments, leaving open the possibility of generating a meaning or a continuation. Also conceived as a series telling stories without the lion, the king of the jungle, without the monarchy, without its power… Leaving room for other animals to rewrite history.

Exhausted from decades of living, an elderly man sets foot aboard a streetcar for a journey that will prove to be very unusual. He does not understand where he is. He does not understand how he has come to this place. But music surrounds him and melodies lead the way.

Humans live their routines inside an ethereal village floating in the sky. What happens when one of them causes the world to end?

The pursuit of belonging draws a mother and daughter into a secretive battle for political control.

A childhood memory is the trigger for research that uncovers an all too lucrative market and its racist background. What is the price of skin bleaching, who pays it and who benefits from it?

The film accompanies the experienced speleologist and alpinist Lea Odermatt on her tours beneath the earth‘s surface, through claustrophobic corridors, gigantic galleries and halls that are otherwise visible to researchers only.

An afternoon without smartphones leads two girls to confront the omen of an uncertain future.

In a hill-side village in Ticino, Rea wants to deliver a love letter to her crush. With her roller skates on, she rolls her way to her house. Before she can deliver the letter, however, it flies away downhill through the town. Rea embarks on a breakneck tumble through the village to catch the letter, dodging countless obstacles on the bumpy terrain of the old town streets, before finally delivering the letter.

One continuous give-and-take as six performers push towards a paradigm shift in the future. Following a 1970 score written by Pauline Oliveros in response to SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, they ask ‘Can sounds, rhythms and light produce queer relations? Can they become revolutionary?'

A tapir mother reveals her tragic story in an embroidery. She suffers a violent attack, the loss of her home, and the disappearance of her son. Will she find him?

As Sicilian journalist Giuseppe Quatriglio turns 90, his daughter starts filming him. When he dies, she keeps on filming. Boxes become archival materials, as journeys, women and post-war Europe come to the fore. And in the end, there is a father.

Various images of the alpine landscape.

A sensory exploration of the forest and the tensions that inhabit it, Osmosis interweaves images of pure chlorophyll and the dense blackness of burnt forests. The dynamics of these cycles of life and death imprinted pictorially on 16mm film are amplified by a soundscape articulating sensations of anxiety and appeasement, connecting human and non human in an organic mesh.

Swiss musician Dodo travels the world in a container that serves as a mobile production studio, but his dream project runs into trouble along the way

A camera rotates around the same four towers. Seasons, weather conditions and the positions of the camera change over the course of the film. The sound goes round in circles and drifts in variations.

A documentary looking at the utilization of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves for such purposes as space travel and electronics.

It's time to eat. Frédérique heads for the fridge to pull out a meagre meal: a carrot. At the last slice, Frédérique has that horrible bloated feeling. In the safety of her shrink's office, she shares her anguish. Her doctor reassures her, comforts her, re-establishes her self-confidence. But that won't be enough…

Eleven-year-old Aisha wants to fish for a living, but her mother thinks that fishing should be left to men. Aisha’s life transforms when fisherman Hassan decides to teach her how to fish.

The Shuar Indians live on the western edge of the tropical rainforest, between the Amazon lowlands in the east and the Andean highlands in the west, on the territories of the two states Ecuador and Peru. "Earlier, when I was a child, my grandfather took me by the hand and led me up a hill. He was already walking with a stick, but was still strong. He said to me: This land is Shuar land and the one who created this nature is a being called Arútam. When I die, you children will have to defend this land that belongs to us. These words are forever etched in my memory" (Antonio Chiriap, regional president of the Shuar-Federation).

Ange, a rigorous and sensitive teenager, starts his first year in high school. Profoundly unhappy, he starts writing to try to understand himself. While doing so, he befriends three teens who will help him on his path to inner peace.

Finding the right outfit for the night turns into a nightmare for Lola: everything is in the eye of the beholder – and that's her problem.

10.35 p.m. – the start of the night shift at the University Hospital in Zurich. We accompany a midwife who, during her long and intense shift, empathetically helps the mothers and babies under her watch, taking into account all their individual differences.

A snail wants to become a painter and embarks upon a wonderful journey of self-discovery.

Someone moves into a strange neighbourhood. Something isn't right here.

The film asks the fundamental question: is there such a thing as fate?

In 2013, an auteur film causes a scandal because of its sex scenes. I was sixteen and one of the angry viewers. Ten years later, I'm ready to settle the score with this film in the form of a video essay.

Takes the story of Anna Göldi, the last European witch to be executed (1782) in Switzerland, as the point of departure and considers the ramifications of hearsay and storytelling. Highlighting the role of the witness, the work documents the landscapes that contain—and subtly recount—buried histories of injustices.

As Arctic ice melts, borders shift. Inaccessible places and resources become accessible, and new claims to raw materials and territories are made. The Arctic is changing like never before, from a romanticized image of wild, harsh nature to a technological place full of economic interests.

In the dunes of the Sahara, a Jaima, the traditional Saharawi tent. Through the tea ritual, a woman takes us into the past and present of her people, persecuted and driven from their land. There are three teas she offers us: the first, bitter as life; the second, sweet as love; the third, mild as death. Each tea tells us a story.

A short movie by yuri A containing multiple poop facts.

A film about sex and sexual identity. Interviews are used in the film to lead a discourse on day-to-day dealings with sex and identity and explore how these are construed out on the street, in film/on television and in personal relationships. How can insinuations and overtones be counteracted? Who or what decides a person’s sex? An active queer community exists in Berlin. Queering is perceived as an exercise in re-examining experiences, perceptions, knowledge, constraints and desires.

C. is about to be arrested. Something to do with a motorbike. Estranged from his family, he finds refuge in the evenings at his friend Ramzi’s house, where he discovers a new aspect of family relationships. During the day, he wanders the streets of Geneva, selling musk on the sly, while suffering from a worrying injury to his face.

Winter 2021, Atacama Desert, Chile. Around one of the largest lithium mines in the world, several protagonists tell of their attachment to this territory. The commitment of an indigenous woman for water rights, the doubts of scientists exploring the desert as an analogue to Mars, the belief of industrialists, the ghosts of colonisation and the stories of new explorers collide.

In between 1984--1985, Distel worked on Die Reise (The Trip), a stunning train and railroad field recording montage. Location recordings were made in the Zürich-Bern Intercity on a trip he recorded ten times to get the source material. Die Reise starts and is based on the train sound counterpointing with singing CICADAS as well as birds and human voices. It seems the composer is recording the voice of the train to add to the choir of cicadas, birds, hissing electronic sounds and human voices.

At the mercy of the dentist's chair, the protagonist cannot escape the confrontation with pain and the dregs of the miserable human condition. To distract himself, he takes refuge in a fantasised story of fishermen and the sea.

View from a funicular train in the Montreux region.

View from a train in the Montreux region.