Imitation of Life

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.

A woman goes to Cannes and, lost in its chaos and unable to obtain tickets, ends up watching it on television from her hotel room.

A journalist is assigned to interview an eccentric anthropologist who has exhumed the skeleton of Jörg Jenatsch, a revered freedom fighter who was mysteriously murdered in 1639. Initially disinterested, the journalist begins to uncover unflattering truths about the national hero and experiences visions in which he seems to be witnessing events that transpired over 300 years ago. As he obsessively pursues the investigation, his personal life and his grip on reality disintegrate, drawing him relentlessly toward the fatal carnival at which Jenatsch was killed.

Kazuo Ohno, Father of the Butoh Dance, first appeared on stage at the age of 43. He left the stage only at the age of one hundred, three years before he died. This short dialogue less film presents the exceptional range of expressions that this Japanese dancer could achieve, both with makeup and costumes and without.

Live performance from the Zurich Opera House, January 2002.

A wacky coup d'etat masterminded by a Russian call girl, in of all places, staid Switzerland, is the subject of Daniel Schmid's black humorous satire on power and its misuses.

Acclaimed soprano Edita Gruberova stars as the title character in this 1996 production of Gaetano Donizetti's "Linda di Chamounix," featuring the Orchestra and Chorus of the Zurich Opera House under the direction of conductor Adam Fischer. Secretly in love with Viscount Carlo (Deon van der Walt), Linda goes mad when she learns a marriage to another woman has been arranged for him. Jacob Will and László Polgár also star.

Satire on 19th-century class relations and thinly veiled commentary on the failure of the 1968 political revolution.

Early short by Daniel Schmid.

A man returns to the hotel he grew up in and recounts the quirky goings on of his youth.