Ciné-Journal au féminin (de la ménagère à la soldate) (1980)

Dimitri - Clown

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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.

Arada

The story of three Turkish men. They all grew up in Switzerland and all got deported after various criminal offenses.

GLOW

She was a muse, model and performer – a star, dazzling and intense. Lady Shiva managed to rise from street prostitution to the top. She lived in the fast lane and died tragically young. Her dream was to become a singer. With her companions, we trace her life during a vibrant time that kindles a yearning and provokes until today. The story of a woman’s meteoric fate and a great dream. An irrepressible desire for freedom in all its beauty and destructive force - and a stirring friendship and love.

Bear-Like

At the far end of the Alaskan peninsula, for filmmaker Roman Droux a childhood dream comes true. He discovers together with the bear researcher David Bittner the universe of wild grizzlies. The two adventurists face bears at smelling-distance, experience the struggle for survival of a bear family and witness dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed in breathtaking pictures of unique creatures.

Life in Progress

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Ho und Überall

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Miriam Goldschmidt – Creator of the In-between

Nearing the end of a long and successful stage career, Miriam Goldschmidt finds her prowess as an actress increasingly on the wane. She struggles to memorize her lines and as her last project with lifelong collaborator, the legendary director Peter Brook, threatens to fall apart, Miriam looks back. Referencing Brook’s ground-breaking book «The Empty Space», she uses an empty rehearsal room in Berlin to invoke her archetypal life journey that took an orphaned black child from post-war Germany to the world’s biggest stages. We «Call Her Miriam» is a bewitching and moving portrait of a great artist living between dream and reality, truth and fction and life and death.

The Congress of Penguins

The real place where the penguin congress takes place is also the most fictional place on this planet where you can stand on your own two legs. Here, even the animals can talk. This land of dreams and nightmares is called Antarctica. In this desert of ice surrounded by a stormy sea, a few dozen human beings also live. Using sophisticated instruments, they observe the worrying changes affecting our world: the hole in the ozone layer, climate change, and so on.

The Knowledge of Healing

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

Muhai Tang - In The Ocean Of Music

MUHAI TANG – IN THE OCEAN OF MUSIC is a portrait of Chinese conductor Muhai Tang’s extraordinary life. Born in 1949, the founding year of the People’s Republic of China, and raised during the Cultural Revolution, it seemed as if he would have to abandon his dream of a career in music. However, his talent, perseverance and the support of Herbert von Karajan ultimately brought him to the world’s concert halls. Today, Muhai Tang is a global nomad. A wanderer between the worlds which he unites with music. His personal history, interspersed with historical caesurae, is typical for Chinese of his generation. He gained access to western culture early on through music. Muhai Tang’s life and work are exemplary of a changing China and the enrichment of the world by an artist between East and West.

Brother's Body

(Re)immersing himself in body building, David Nicolas Parel endeavours to follow his younger brother as he trains for the Arnold Classic – Arnold, from the famous Austrian/American actor and politician. Convinced he is the one who inspired this passion, he worries about the risks this sport has on his brother’s health and aspires to strengthen their now strained bond. A film on the edge.

The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy

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 the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.

Ikaria

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The Fortress

The personal stories of the people from all around the world waiting for a decision in an asylum-seekers centre in one of most restrictive countries in the world, Switzerland.

David Wants to Fly

A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.

Die Reisen des Santiago Calatrava

A documentary feature about architect Santiago Calatrava.

The House In The Park

Architects from Europe, America and China are invited to a Chinese provincial town. Within several months, they are to construct a park in Jinhua, intended to form the centre of a new district of that town. Where green fields now flourish and farmers plough the land, investors will soon flock, followed by new inhabitants and political reforms. But the project ends up being drawn out over years. The euphoria of the early stages runs up against a reality in which torn-open earth and the ambitious hopes of politicians, workers and locals are the only manifest features. The film documents the changes leading to the Jinhua Architecture Park - from the laying of the foundation stone to its final opening. In giving all participants in this process an opportunity to comment.

Signer's Suitcase

SIGNERS KOFFER is 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. Roman Signer determines the route that we are moving on and the film improvises along the way. Being on the road also means tracking down the right places. Signer brings them alive using his own personel instruments, brilliantly simple operations full of subtle humour. «Simple» poems being transmitted into space with INSTRUMENTS as gunpowder, fuse, rubber boots, balloons, stool, small table ... and a three wheelded Plaggio. SIGNERS KOFFER is also a journey through the state of mind. A tightrope walk between fun and melancholy. Danger also mental mental danger becomes the stimulus of the senses. Sudden crashes, abrupt chagnes of mood determine the rythm and atmosphere of this cinematic journey.

Sounds and Silence - Travels with Manfred Eicher

On the way through a world of sounds and noise – with Manfred Eicher, the oustanding discoverer and mediator of contemporary music and founder of the music label ECM. On this journey we are meeting musicians and composers, but also people and places which are connected with him and with each other. We are encountering stories, landscapes, cities, disputes and hugs, tranquillity, hectic pace, work, self-doubt, joy, passion.

Albert Hofmann - Wahrnehmungen

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Gambling, Gods and LSD

Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.

Endlich Chef

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The Mindful Revolution

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

Die Demokratie ist los!

An analysis of the current state of democracy in Switzerland

Wild Women: Gentle Beasts

Animal tamers from various continents shine in the spotlight and struggle for their existence behind the scenes. Between toiling and smiling, the female circus artists disclose their passion for their 'wild' animals and extraordinary profession: a daily life full of dedication and discipline in the midst of mortal danger.

Winter Nomads

Pascal, 53, and Carole, 28, are shepherds. In the month of November 2010, they embark on their long winter transhumance: four months during which they will have to cover 600 km in the Swiss-French region, accompanied by three donkeys, four dogs and eight hundred sheep. An exceptional adventure is about to begin: they brave the cold and the bad weather day in day out, with a canvas cover and animal skins as their only shelter at night. This saga reveals a tough and exacting profession, requiring constant improvisation and unflinching attention to nature, the animals and the cosmos. An eventful journey with surprise encounters, moving reunions with farmer friends, nostalgic figures of country life that is shrinking away fast. Αn adventure film, a contemporary road movie, a reflection of our current world, which takes us back to our roots and our inner questions.

In the Garden of Sounds

«Nel giardino dei suoni» («In The Garden of Sounds») is a touching, poetic exploration of the relationship between mind, body and sound, and a cinematic journey to the borders of communication. Nicola Bellucci tells the extraordinary story of Wolfgang Fasser, a blind musician and soundscape artist who works with severely handicapped children, helping them to find their place in a world not made for them. On his own way into the darkness, Fasser discovered the world of sounds, a parallel universe to our visual world. His far-reaching explorations of sound’s effect on mind and body led him to the field of music therapy.

The Beast Within

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Bad Boy Kummer

For four years, Tom Kummer fooled SZ Magazine and other reputable media outlets in Germany and Switzerland with his fake interviews. He owed his longevity to his professionalism: his work always demonstrated seriousness, thoroughness, and quality. He faked interviews with Sharon Stone, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, and Bruce Willis, in which he also talked to the stars about personal topics such as sex and drugs. Today, Kummer works as a tennis instructor in Los Angeles.

Magic Matterhorn

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

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.

Alexandre Tharaud, le temps dérobé

Atypical dive into the world of a particularly talented artist of today: Alexandre Tharaud. Born of parents who were themselves familiar with the stage, Alexandre combines his passion for the piano and his fertile intranquillity under the eye of an intimate camera. A film conducted in the form of an exploration of intimate moments where the artist is much more in front of himself than the public, a confrontation at once gentle and brutal to his passion, to his unattainable star. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Grüningers Fall

The Grüninger case from Switzerland. This is a documentary about a police officer who showed civil courage back in the forties when he led many refugees fleeing German Nazi terror immigrate to Switzerland, although he was advised not to do so. Grüninger later was sued by the state of Switzerland, lost his job and died in the early seventies. The film constructs a just lawsuit with eye-witnesses and thus fully legitimates what Grüninger did.

Chronique vigneronne

This documentary show the work, the worries and the joys of a family dedicated to viticulture, the Potterat, living in Lavaux. Three generations live together, keeping the old traditions