Le film du cinéma suisse

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon, in Italy, in Germany and in Switzerland.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

Short film by Markus Imhoof.

With dazzling nature photography, Academy Award®–nominated director Markus Imhoof (The Boat Is Full) takes a global examination of endangered honeybees — spanning California, Switzerland, China and Australia — more ambitious than any previous work on the topic.

On her honeymoon on a ship the daughter of a rich plant owner realizes that she's not happy with her marriage. She meets a poor woman on the way to meet her future husband, a missionary in India. The women decide to swap roles...

It's 1922. A weather observer and his wife live in a remote cabin high in the Swiss Alps. As this drama begins, they are being joined by a third person, an Austrian who coveted the job the Swiss man had won in this bleak location. Not only that, but he also has his eyes on the Swiss man's lovely wife. The Austrian has charm, so he wins some hospitality from the couple. The three live together for a little while, but the rivalry between the two men soon erupts with tragic consequences.

Jacques asks a public writer to compose love letters for a beautiful stranger that he pretends he has just met.

This uneven comedy of manners concerns a young film projectionist (Jerome Ange) who sets out to find a marriageable woman. He sets his sights on two women he has lived with for nearly ten years (Kristin Scott-Thomas and Sylvie Orcier). For some reason, the projectionist encourages one of the women to hire a private detective (Patrice Kerbrat) to monitor his romantic activities.

A Swiss political documentary about the Zurich youth unrest of 1968

The history of Hollywood and filmmaking comes alive in this spectacular nine hour celebration of movie magic. It's a mesmerizing, epic analysis that combines rare archival film, key scenes from immortal movies, interviews with leading filmmakers and commentary from noted film scholars and critics. As seen on PBS, this highly acclaimed series is the definitive chronicle of the American cinema, from its beginning to today. Includes interviews with Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Spike Lee, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet, Julia Roberts, Martin Scorsese, Gene Siskel, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and many more. A New York Center for Visual History Production in co-production with KCET and the BBC

With the help of his assistant Anja, Ottocaro Weiss intends to put the plague on stage: circumstances beyond his control and a lack of fresh talent have forced him to close down his flea circus. For Weiss, the plague means the «extinction of everything that makes life miserable and low and freedom along with it. Unbeknownst to him, he has won the support of a patron who is of the exact opposite opinion: for Johannes Wagner, the plague is an organising principle, and, aided by his agent Moosbrugger, he is able to smuggle a new number onto the programme. Whereas Ottocaro Weiss means to represent the plague theatrically, what appears on stage is the scientific reality of the rat-borne infestation.

Even with good acting, pleasant music, and artistic photography, this "love-boat" story of romance is more like Alice in Wonderland rather than Alice on the streets of Zurich. The Zurich Alice is a flautist who plays for the passersby like many another street or Metro musician. While so engaged, she meets a VIP Russian flautist who has defected and is living in the city. He falls in love with her and as a gesture of his devotion decides to arrange her solo concert debut. Meanwhile, Alice easily figures out what his plans are and devises her own secret scheme. When the day of the performance arrives, her Russian heartthrob is in for a flattering surprise, sure to end his bachelor status. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

It is carnival time in Munich and participants are overindulging in alcohol and sensual pleasures. "Follow us into madness" beckons Lys who is drunk on life, but the sensitive Henry does not follow him. Lys has betrayed his fiancé, as Henry once betrayed his lost love Anna. In memory of Anna and his cruel Dickensian childhood, Henry challenges Lys to a duel to try to appease his guilt.

Even in war, the life of a rich family is different, according to this fictional story about Francois Korb (Armin Müller-Stahl) an arms manufacturer who sold both to the Germans and the Allied forces. Korb's home life is less than ideal, since his wife is having an affair with his brother, and his young son is inseparable from a teddy bear. To remedy the son's situation, the parents take in a little refugee girl as a temporary companion and playmate, and the two children become fast friends -- and when they meet again long after the war, the influence of family is all the more apparent. Meanwhile, the arms dealer will learn the hard way that weapons kill.

A theatrical group prepare Voltaire’s play “Alzire”. From this the ideas of Voltaire are examined as they relate to the present day political situation.

At the end of the 19th century, an educated white-collar worker finds himself in the employ of an inventor. As he is neither a "worker" nor an "owner," his position in the inventor's household and in the world at large is equivocal. Despite the difficulties he encounters, he tries to hold onto his job in order to support his family, but is eventually fired. This Swiss movie is based on a novel written around 1900 by Robert Walser.

Scenes taken from the famous films which made the glory of French-speaking Swiss cinema in the years after 1966.

The vicissitudes of showbiz take the hero Renart (Gerald Battiaz) and his wife Hermeline (Francoise Dupertuis) from up to down and back again in this brief drama. Renart entertains at a nightclub by pulling objects out of a suitcase on stage and creating a wide range of sound effects with his collection of odds and ends. All goes well until his wife is fired from her job at the club because she is pregnant. That infuriates Renart, and he quits. The couple then take off for the mountains and open up a club of their own, but now when he is the owner, Renart is transformed for the worse.

Five women's impressions of being single.

A lazy surveyor is thwarted by two women whose houses he is surveying for destruction to make way for a park. In another realm of the story, a man is given a hat by another man, who asks him to give his fiancé a gift. However, he mistakenly gives the gift to another girl entirely, and makes love to her.

A short film.

A short film.

Two anarchic friends spend the summer driving in their Cadillac, fooling around, flirting and discussing philosophy with older generations.

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.

The life of the actress and model Capucine inspired this film by Michel Soutter, played by Capucine herself in the company of Heinz Béat, Antoinette Moya, Corinne Corderey and Jean-Pierre Malo.

As he sets off for the countryside outside Geneva a taxi-driver hears a gunshot and notices a shadowy figure slipping away from the scene. So begins a series of strange incidents.

A collection of woodworkers' portraits, among them carvers and coopers, roof tilers and toymakers.

The Bapst Brothers: Romain, Maurice and Jacques – whom we will also meet in The Gruyere Chronicle (produced in 1990) – are peasants and carriers and work with their father. In autumn and winter, they bid for the community’s wood, cut down the pine trees and bring down the logs through the snowy woods by horse-drawn sleigh.

A tale, told by his five daughters, of the life and death of a man very representative of a Protestant Switzerland in the early 20th century where life was conditioned by the work ethic. He was first a farmer, then a factory worker, then the head of a small family affair where his daughters became his workers. The business grew into an large factory that would be eventually taken over by the only son. The five stories show us the family and professional context of the first half of the 20th century. They are also five different versions of the serene death of a man who felt he had done his duty. The film illustrates the ideas of Max Weber, known for their importance in understanding the Western civilization that emerged from the Reformation.

A young Swiss drug addict (Jacques Zanetti) has been imprisoned for robbery, and must wait and wait for his upcoming trial, all the while isolated and without hope of parole - the police are convinced he is a dealer and not just a user. He hears from his son that his girlfriend has a new man, and begins to despair of ever coming to trial, or of having another relationship like the one he lost. This fiction film is said to be based on a true story.

The shooting of this peasant chronicle in the Gruyère region of Switzerland lasted a whole year, from July 1989 to July 1990. A year of work and festivities in the family of Conrad and Louise Bapst, their children and grandchildren who live in La Roche (canton of Fribourg). In summer, part of the family goes with the herd to the upper pastures, and will move six times in the next three months, as the grass for the cows grows in higher and higher places. At the farm below, the rest of the family mows the hay and the after crop, and tends the vegetable garden. Fall and winter bring new chores, along with feast-days, and the sale of cheeses to pay for rented pastures. We see the family participate in a vote for or against the Swiss Army, and at a meeting where mountain farmers discuss whether or not to join the European Union. The film displays the patient and human approach of an almost silent minority of Switzerland.

An animated cartoon about the Creation myth reviewed and corrected by two women. God the magician has decided to create a paradise: Switzerland. He covers it with trees and cows, until Adam is born. After exploring his paradise, Adam creates Eve from one of his ribs. Man is shown as an erect penis, woman by a limbless trunk.