Social & External
In preparation for a feature-length film about windmills, an assistant director travels through the Vaud region to search for locations with windmills. The research leads to a serious engagement with the meaning and purpose of windmills, which has something Don Quixote-like about it in the age of nuclear power stations. The transitions between document and fiction flow constantly and result in a charming and intellectual mixture of seriousness and fun, determination and coincidence, weightlessness and the weight of meaning.
A dog story about a stray traveling in the dense and swallowing Amazon jungle, the dusty streets of Quito, Ecuador, and a Switzerland. Arthur joined a race, and outpaced death, to find a new life with the adopted adventure seekers.
Starting from the Swiss village of Zermatt, two people and a guide make a perilous ascent of the Matterhorn. Local villagers mount a torchlight rescue of a British couple trapped on the famous mountain. Irving Allen shot footage for this documentary while filming his feature film 'High Conquest'. Filmed in Ansocolor, the documentary won the Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1947.
Lisa, the brothel madam of the luxurious “Le Vénusia” in Geneva, and Lena, an artless prostitute as unpredictable as she is lazy, are filmed in the intimacy of a smoking room—where their relationship will combine tenderness and cruelty.
Dr. James Graham, a physician in a struggling Oklahoma town, fights to save its bankrupt hospital.
For twenty years the Wiesenbergers cultivated the same rituals. Practising once a week in the local chappel and singing for weddings and birthdays. Meanwhile, their world turned upside down. Their CD is rising up the charts and they're overwhelmed with concert request - showbusiness is calling. Now, they even were invited to perform in Shanghai. But the tempting offer puts their solidarity to a test.
Boulders in Valais presents the canton of Valais in Switzerland, its bouldering climbing spots and some of its historical and current actors and driving forces including Lucien Abbet, Benoît Dorsaz, Fred Nicole, Dave Graham... Frédéric and François Nicole gives us spectacular demonstrations of this sport, showing us routes like "Radja", the world's first 8b+. A topo-video part contains 28 climbing sites with a geographical map, and more than 160 video sequences for as many chosen blocks... more than 2h30 of climbing.
Documentary portrait of a rural Belarusian doctor.
Bouldering in Switzerland.
"Huangyangchuan, Gansu province, China. It's an arid mountain area with poor roads. Ma Bingcheng is well-respected local doctor, so many patients (most of them farmers) come to see him every day. In his small clinic, people chat with each other about their lives, local conditions, or the people they know. The clinic seems to open up like a microcosm, the information and experiences of different people intertwine, revealing the conditions of typical Chinese farmers, and the typical fates of both young and old--"
A grey-haired man walks through the fields. Fatigued, but with the same tenacity he roams the roads, the pathways, the tracks every day, medical bag in hand. Everyone awaits him: desperate or in hope, to the dying or to the woman in labour. He is the local GP. In fact, he is film director Imre Gyöngyössy’s father, the protagonist of one of his first short films. The personal narration based on the director’s poem is made complete by the pictures of Sándor Sára and István Gaál who were also active at Balázs Béla Studio at that time.
MTV Unplugged Tonbildshow - Unplugged Concert from Patent Ochsner, one of Switzerland's best-known rock bands
Silver Forest is a brutally realistic coming-of-age story, set in a small Swiss town in a bleak winter landscape. A group of boys struggle with their mounting anger with the mundane world, resulting in a string of escalating acts of violence. Deep in the forest they finally find a release for their aggression by joining a Nazi gang - only to discover the boundaries where harmless play turns into murder.
A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.
A midwife is caught in a snowstorm on the way to Anatolia and forced to spend four months in an isolated village., where she’s soon tending sick children and delivering babies.
Drama from the Grisons mountains in Rhaeto-Romanic. When farmer Toni goes into the mountains with his son Meltger (Bruno Cathomas) to dig for gentian roots, he takes young Senza (Pia Solèr) with him against his will. Tensions soon arise... Based on Gion Deplazes‘ story.
