Swiss Experimental Films from 1962-1974 in India
Pro Helvetia New Delhi in collaboration with Reservoir 21 February 2011 – 7 March 2011. [dated February 2011]

Swiss Experimental Films from 1962-1974 Pro Helvetia New Delhi in collaboration with reservoirfilm 21 February 2011 – 7 March 2011

Swiss Experimental Films is a project which will include screening of films belonging to Swiss Experimental films movement that started in the 1960's, as well as inviting people attached to this genre from Switzerland for discussions. The project was proposed to Pro Helvetia and is in collaboration with Reservoir, a Zurich based, free collective of curators for the experimental cinema and the art film. There will be a curated package of films illustrating the history of this genre, often referred to as the ‘film wonder’ of the 1960’s and 1970’s. These films were part of a restoration project taken up by Reservoir in 2005/2006 to preserve the most important yet long-forgotten films of this period in their original 16mm-format.

Itinerary : 

James Beveridge Media Resource Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia University New Delhi 21 February 2011 

National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 24, 25 & 26 February 2011

Satyajit Ray Institute, Kolkata 28 Feb, 1 & 2 March 2011

Little Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai 5, 6 & 7 March 2011

In partneship with Mohile Parikh Centre, Mumbai In the late 1950's and 1960's a new cinema emerges in Europe and with a slight dealy also Switzerland is affected by new ideas. The "Neuer Schweizer Film" (New Swiss Cinema) and the names associated to it (Alain Tanner, Michel Soutter, Claude Goretta, Daniel Schmid, Thomas Koerfer, Fredi Murer, Clemens Klopfenstein and others) quite quickly became internationally renown so that still today, the Swiss film industry and film promotion refers often to this "film wonder" of the 1960's and 1970's. The official Swiss film histories largely discuss those figures and their films, but almost nothing has been written about the undercurrents in the film culture that decisively determined the breakup with the old filmic traditions and made the "wonder" possible in the first place. In fact, as in other countries, also in Switzerland before the "Neue Schweizer Film" launched, a general climate of change had arisen, genre borders had been crossed, experiments in the filmic form and narration conducted, forums for the "progressive film" founded. One of the most important places for discussion was the Film Forum in Zurich. Under the direction of film maker Hans-Jakob Siber it regularly showcased works from the New American Cinema, triggered discussions about new filmic forms and encouraged local film makers to bring in their own work for projection. The idea spread quickly and soon the Ciné Circus was founded, a cinema on wheels based at the Film Forum in Zurich. The Ciné Circus consisted of a car, a 16mm-filmprojector and a changing set of one or two people who knew how to handle either one of them. The Circus gave regular guest performances in Lucerne, Basel and Berne and these evenings quickly developed into rallies, where the young Swiss film makers assembled and maintained their discussions between the yearly film meeting in Solothurn (Solothurner Filmtage). 

Just a few years later, however, the brief moment of storm and stress in the film scene is over. The film funding system had eventually developed, success and failure had decided on careers, the fiction film had taken the lead again and many of the former cinema tinkerer, who had been developing their own film language in small and experimental forms, tried to establish an economic life and a career for their own in the cinema (Fredi Murer, Clemens Klopfenstein, Alexander Seiler, Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf) or started working for Swiss television and the commercials (Louis Jent, Robert Schär). Most of those who had worked for years in the grey area between the "big picture" and the artistic expression in small, easy to control projects put their cameras aside and deposited their films in their cellars and cupboards at home (Hans-Jakob Siber, Reto Andrea Savoldelli, Guido Haas, Kurt Kühn, Sebastian C. Schroeder, Georg Radanowicz, HHK Schoenherr, Hannes Bossert and finally also Louis Jent and Robert Schär). Very rarely they were heard of in later days. Only very few artists continued to work with small forms, some even up to this date (Isa Hesse-Rabionwicz, Werner von Mutzenbecher, Dieter Meier). Hardly any of the films have been deposited in film archives, where their outlast would have been guaranteed. After around 1974 a long period of oblivion started for most of those films. In 2005/2006 reservoirfilm, a Zurich based, free collective of curators for the experimental cinema and the art film started to dig into the history of the Swiss experimental film movements. They had to go from person to person, phone call to phone call and email to email to find the people, who had made experimental films in the 1960's and 1970's and what they found was both miraculous and alarming: Beautiful Films, hand scratched or directly painted on the materials, films with excentric narrations, witty ideas, beautifully framed poetic images – films of an artistic quality that competes with the international avant-garde movements – but long forgotten and in the most part for decades never showed in public, film prints degraded over time. The remains were sometimes only one copy of a film, worn to threads by former use. Already for the series of film screenings in May 2006 they had the possibility to transfer some of the most endangered films to Video. Those film programmes have been shown with an astonishing echo in Zurich, Basel and Geneva and eventually also in Paris. After the presentations, they worked out a restoration project ("Schweizer Filmexperimente 1950-1988") to preserve the most important films of the period and to ensure that also in the future they can be presented in their original 16mm-format. 

The curated package of films will be accompanied by Dr Fred Truniger and Dr François Bovier for discussions. Dr Fred Truniger was trained as a film historian and is currently working as a cultural critic at different Universities in Switzerland. He holds a Masters degree in Film Theory from the University of Zurich and a PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. He is currently the head of the Master of Advanced Studies programme "Design | Art + Innovation" of the Basel School of Art and Design and also working at the Institute for Landscape Architecture of the ETH Zurich as a research fellow and head assistant. Since 1991 he has been a member of the programme committees in several film festivals. He worked for the experimental film festival "VIPER" in Lucerne from 1991-1997 where he founded the New Media Programme in 1995 and organised symposia, exhibitions and film programmes. Starting in 1997 he worked for the international short film festival Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen as part of the selection committee for the international competition. There he curated the special programme "Nützliche Bilder / Useful Images" on the relationship between film and the sciences in 1998. From 2001-2006 he was committee member of the documentary film festival "Duisburger Filmwoche". 2005 he was co-publisher of the restored Version of the Video "Züri brännt" on DVD. Also in 2005 he co-founded reservoir, a free collective of curators for film mediation (www.reservoirfilm.ch) to organise shows and discussions of experimental and art films in several Swiss cities. Since 2006 he conducts a research and restoration project on "Swiss Experimental Films from 1950-1988". Thomas Schärer, M.A., born 1968, studied History and Film at the universities of Zürich and Berlin (FU). After a first job as trainee at the Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, Berlin (1996-1997, Kino Arsenal, Form) he worked as free journalist and collaborated for expositions as researcher (150 Jahre Bundesstaat 1997), filmmaker (Expos.ch, 2001, 100 Jahre Bundeshaus 2002, L’histoire c’est moi, 2004) and interviewer (L’histoire c’est moi, 2004, La mémoire de la Suisse humanitaire, 2009-2010). From 2000 to 2004 he was heading (together with Irene Genhart) the section “Semaine de la critique” of the Locarno Film Festival. Since 2000 he worked in different positions, mainly as researcher, for the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZhDK) . 2005 he published a book about the history of the first film school of Switzerland (“Wir wollten den Film neu erfinden”, Book and DVD, Limmat-Verlag). Since 2007 Schärer is heading the ZHDK-research project “Cinémémoire.ch – an oral history of swiss film” (Publication planned for 2011). 2009 he (together with Stefan Länzlinger) published the first book on film and its use within the swiss worker movement (“Stellen wir diese Waffe in unseren Dienst” Book and DVD, Chronos Verlag). Currently, Thomas Schärer is writing a thesis about ethnographic film at the university of Basel (Prof. Walter Leimgruber) and is preparing – together with Fred Truniger and François Bovier – a research project about experimental film in Switzerland (Schweizer Filmexperimente 1950-1988). 

To view city specific listing of screenings clck here