The hills of Lausanne, Switzerland, have become a Mecca for roller-skaters and Ivano has become a prince among them. Ivano rises above the ordinary and often dead-end choices that most young people face today.
The hills of Lausanne, Switzerland, have become a Mecca for roller-skaters and Ivano has become a prince among them. Ivano rises above the ordinary and often dead-end choices that most young people face today.
1997-08-22
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Fantasizes an 'Old' Middle East, wherein communities were not divided along ethnic and religious lines; a Middle East in which even metaphorical borders had no place
Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. This documentary, which has achieved cult-like status among opera and music lovers, features former singers who reminisce about their careers and their past operatic roles.
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.
Five New York divas close up. The thing that in addition to their friendship links these gifted, confident and beautiful women; a painter, an actress and three musicians, is their shared homeland, former Yugoslavia.
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.
A documentary about healers from the Swiss canton of Appenzell.
Documentary account of a man’s life in the face of imminent death – Francisco Varela's story told affectionately and gently, touchingly and astutely. Varela spent his life building bridges: between Western science and Eastern wisdom, neurobiology and philosophy, abstract theory and practical life. This film seeks to deconstructs the prevailing division between science and art.
The film follows five professional photographers in Los Angeles, Latin America, Paris, Berlin and Switzerland in their daily struggle to come by. It shows how digitalization and the internet affects and transforms their work deeply. It talks about the world as much as about the image of that world. It talks about pictures and their meaning and what they trigger in those who watch them.
Swiss artist Markus Raetz has a sixth sense for apprehending the extraordinary. His works are as astonishing as a magician's sleight of hand: they shake up visual habits and show things from a completely different perspective. To further surprise the viewer, this perceptive Swiss artist makes use of the most diverse techniques, materials and media. His installations and sculptures change their appearance according to their own movement or that of the viewer contemplating them. For example, a rabbit becomes a man in a hat, evoking Beuys, or a yes turns into a no. This document presents us with a highly personal view of the world and the man behind these exceptional works.
Switzerland still carries out special flights, where passengers, dressed in diapers and helmets, are chained to their seats for 40 hours at worst. They are accompanied by police officers and immigration officials. The passengers are flown to their native countries, where they haven't set foot in in up to twenty years, and where their lives might be in danger. Children, wives and work are left behind in Switzerland. Near Geneva, in Frambois prison, live 25 illegal immigrants waiting for deportation. They are offered an opportunity to say goodbye to their families and return to their native countries on a regular flight, escorted by plain-clothes police officers. If they refuse this offer, the special flight is arranged fast and unexpectedly. The stories behind the locked cells are truly heartbreaking.
The Gangbé Brass Band, a musical group from Benin, sets out to conquer Lagos, capital of Nigeria.
Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s underground techno scene. Tired of hiding from the police and their stagnating career, they organize one last manic techno rave under dangerous circumstances in the desert. Back in Tehran they try their luck selling their illegally printed music album without permission. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.
What becomes history, what feeds memory, what shapes an era? Images found in the dustbins of history. Taken out of context, fragments, testimonies and unpublished documents intermingle, interweave and collide. They take on a new meaning, a dimension of authentic proximity. The peregrination touches on the advent of the atomic bomb, the military trials at the end of the war, the lie detector, the discovery of the Majdanek camp; Einstein, Lenin's embalmer, the KGB agent, the American spy rebuilding his life in Russia, the Yugoslav war sniper all have their say.
A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.
The Making of a Dream is a cinematic essay on stories of dancers. It shows joys and pains from the first steps in an amateur school to the goal to become a principal dancer in a world known ballet company.
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.