Albert Hofmann - Wahrnehmungen (2011)

Frau Mercedes

In Bern, Madame Mercedes has been working for 35 years in her car as a prostitute. An intimate and subtle portrait about ageing as a prostitute, a documentary about a vanishing chapter of habits in Switzerland.

A Boy Has Been Dead

An investigation on the death of a 18-year-old boy and its cover-up by the police.

Der Imker

A documentary about Ibrahim Gezer, who escaped from war in Kurdistan to Switzerland. All is lost, except his love for beekeeping.

Wasted Talent

Plot unavailable

Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

The Weird World of LSD

The 60s equivalent of Reefer Madness and all those other 30s drug exploitation flicks. Apparently, dropping acid leads to stripteases, cat fights, promiscuous sex, playing with kittens, and being convinced your dinner is much larger than it actually is. This is all illustrated in a series of silent sketches accompanied by a droll narrator who seems positively doped out of his mind.

No Sense Makes Sense

Portrait of Charles Manson. Contains various interviews with J.R. Bruun, Boyd Rice, Nikolas Schreck and other persons with an interest in Charles Manson, inter cut with a barrage of weird clips from movies and television.

Woodstock

An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.

No No: A Dockumentary

Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then worked for decades counseling drug abusers. Dock's soulful style defined 1970s baseball as he kept hitters honest and embarrassed the establishment. An ensemble cast of teammates, friends, and family investigate his life on the field, in the media, and out of the spotlight.

Into Great Silence

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

The Hippie Temptation

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

Dig!

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

Zen for Nothing

Hidden in the wooded mountains on the west coast of Japan lies the small Zen monastery Antaiji. A young woman sets off to immerse herself through autumn, winter and spring in the adventures of monastic life. The young woman is Sabine Timoteo from Switzerland. The abbot of the monastery is Muho Noelke, born in Berlin. An interplay between the philosophy of the Japanese Zen master Kodo Sawaki and the surprises brought forth by everyday life.

Dread Beat an' Blood

Follows dub poet master Linton Kwesi Johnson out of the recording studio onto the Brixton streets.

Love Parade: When Love Learned to Dance

At the end of the Cold War, something new arised that should influence an entire generation and express their attitude to life. It started with an idea in the underground subculture of Berlin shortly before the fall of the Wall. With the motto "Peace, Joy, Pancakes", Club DJ Dr. Motte and companions launched the first Love Parade. A procession registered as political demonstration with only 150 colorfully dressed people dancing to house and techno. What started out small developed over the years into the largest party on the planet with visitors from all over the world. In 1999, 1.5 million people took part. With the help of interviews with important organizers and contemporary witnesses, the documentary reflects the history of the Love Parade, but also illuminates the dark side of how commerce and money business increasingly destroyed the real spirit, long before the emigration to other cities and the Love Parade disaster of Duisburg in 2010, which caused an era to end in deep grief.

Picture of Light

A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.

Exit: The Right to Die

Switzerland is presently the only country in the world where suicide assistance is legal. Exit: The Right to Die profiles that nation's EXIT organization, which for over twenty years has provided volunteers who counsel and accompany the terminally-ill and severely handicapped towards a death of their choice.

Remue-ménage

Plot unavailable

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

Max Frisch, Citoyen

Max Frisch was the last big Swiss intellectual widely respected as a “voice” in its own right – a character hardly found today. The film retells Frisch’s story as a witness of the unfolding 20th century, wondering if such “voices” are needed at all, or if we could do without them.

Cracolândia

Based on intense research - and seen through different realities, that of those who study it, that of those who try to contain it and that of those who live in it -, the film opens a debate about the largest and most impacting scene of crack use in an open area of ​​the world: Cracolândia, in São Paulo. The work analyzes the causes of this evil and its progressions, in addition to the combat tactics already carried out in São Paulo, opening a parallel with those applied in other countries.

Queen of Condoms

Ceschi and Stamm's documentary tells the incredible story of Monika Krause, a former East German citizen, who became Fidel Castro's Sexual Education Minister. After 20 years in Cuba, Krause set the Cuban sexual revolution in motion: in favor of a woman's right to sexual fulfillment and legal abortion, and against exclusion of homosexuals, she acquired the title "Queen of Condoms". A film about potent female agitators, staunch macho men and Caribbean love lives.

Magic Matterhorn

A documentary about entertainment and home, filmed in Switzerland and California.

Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea

Plot unavailable

Century of Smoke

Laosan, a young family man, spends all his time smoking opium. For his community, lost in the heart of the Laotian jungle, opium farming is the only way to survive. But opium is also the poison that puts men to sleep and kills their desires.

The Congress of Penguins

Plot unavailable

The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story

The full bizarre, tragic but celebratory story of Syd Barrett, the co-founder of Pink Floyd.

Cocaine: History Between the Lines

Cocaine has always gotten a bad rap, and for a reason. It is a drug used by the rich and the poor legally and illegally, Mexican cartels fought over it with Colombia once associated with the brutal cocaine wars, and a source of tension between the American and Mexican borders on the people who are illicitly bringing in cocaine from one side of the border to another and will do anything to do it. So it can be surprising at times to the viewer throughout the course of the documentary special, that it was never always like this.

Balifilm

Balifilm was originally commissioned as a stage performance, created from diary images and sounds collected in 1990 and 1992 by Peter Mettler on the island of Bali. The soundtrack is a live recording of eight Gamelan musicians playing the bronze and wooden instruments of Indonesia during the projection of the film. balifilm is a personal, lyrical observation and expression of the creative pulse of an extraordinary culture.

Hardcore Chambermusic

This documentary follows swiss improvisation musicians and tells there stories.

The Paris Opera

A behind-the-scenes look at the of how the Paris Opera is run under the direction of Stephane Lissner.

De la cuisine au parlement

Switzerland was one of the last countries in the world to grant women the right to vote. This film guides us through a century of Swiss history, tracing the imprint left by the women who fought for the right to leave hearth and home – and by the men who did everything they could to send them back – until they gained legal equality, whose implementation seems to be in question still today.

Life After the Oasis

In 2008, feature documentary, The Oasis, shocked Australia with its gritty insight into the lives of homeless teens at a notorious youth refuge in inner city Sydney. An outpouring of social and political goodwill followed, with the then Prime Minister pledging to halve homelessness by 2020. A decade later, with social inequality and homelessness worse than ever, the original participants reflect on where their lives have taken them.

Que sera?

Documentary film.

The Mindful Revolution

The revolution of mindfulness meditation in the business world - a critical look behind the facade of a modern, spiritual phenomenon.

Architecture of Infinity

How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. With the help of architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli, and Álvaro Siza Vieira, artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias, and drummer Sergé “Jojo” Mayer, he tries to make sense of the world and decipher our spiritual experiences using the seemingly abstract concepts of light, time, rhythm, sound, and shape. The superb cinematography turns this contemplative search into a multi-sensory experience.