Fredi M. Murer

A woman confronts her past – and invents her future. Seventy-six-year-old Elise knows exactly how she will spend the final years of her life: living with Paul, to whom she has been happily married for 50 years, in their villa on Zürichberg till her last breath, and tenderly cared for by Angela, their faithful housekeeper. But then Angela is discovered by the theatre and hired for a stage play. Paul hits a man with his '68 Maserati and subsequently becomes friends with him; Elise passionately kisses a young veterinarian.

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Vitus tells the story of a highly-gifted boy (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for him.

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Fredi M. Murer wrote and directed this Swiss drama about a family with a missing child. The only explanation seems to be kidnapping, but no ransom note arrives. Police inspector Anatol Wasser (Hanspeter Muller) soon faces an elaborate mystery: a dozen Swiss children vanish with no indication of any pattern -- other than the fact that they all lived near lakes. Is organized crime responsible, or does the answer lie in mystical realms? Shown at the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.

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The NAGRA (Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste) plans to build a permanent waste disposal site in Wellenberg, Canton of Nidwalden. A regional citizens’ action group is formed to protest against it.

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A year on an Alpine farm: an older couple have two children, Belli, who wanted to be a teacher, and the younger Franzi, deaf, and although he works like a man, child-like. Belli teaches him. In his work, he can become frustrated, so when he throws an expensive mower over a cliff in a fit of pique, his father banishes him to the outskirts of the farm, where he uses pubescent energy to break rocks and build walls and cairns. (It's the tradition of the father's family, called "The Irascibles" by neighbors, to spend puberty doing this.) Belli visits him and they begin sleeping together. By winter, the boy is back in the house and Belli is pregnant. Soon her parents must know.

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Debbie Harry first solo album with banned art by H.R. Giger is covered.

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Without knowing it, Alfred and Julia live in a land of pure invention. It is the richest and most beautiful land in the world. From a height, this land looks like a piece of felt, from close up like a clean and tiny park. The footpaths are lined with benches and the streets with banks. Alfred and Julia have been married for 8 years, are childless, and live on the 16th floor of a new building. Thanks to their various crises, they have got to know each other somewhat better, but their most outstanding characteristic remains their mediocrity. On Friday, August 12th 1977, a mysterious epidemic breaks out in their country. The mass media ensure that the news is widely broadcast. The authorities order a ban on information, but those concerned break their imposed silence. On Sunday evening, it becomes known that the epidemic was nomore than a kind of "dress rehearsal" for a real emergency. Alfred and Julia continue to live in a land of pure invention - but now they are conscious of the fact.

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A documentary about Swiss mountain folk.

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H.R. Giger became known all over the world as the designer of the aliens in Ridley Scott's feature film ALIEN. In this documentary about H.R. Giger's work, which was made many years before, the artist's creative process and the interplay between conscious and unconscious influences are the focus. Statements by experts and contemporaries address the question of the artist's position and social responsibility [filmingo].

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Three short films about the future of Switzerland.

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Sad-is-fiction, Fredi M. Murer’s third artist film, takes as its subject the Zurich-based painter and poet Alex Sadkowsky. “Modern man leans neither to the right nor to the left; he just keeps walking” runs the start of the programmatic introduction – and, for the rest of the film, Sadkowsky does just that. He wanders through aeroplanes and through London, and leaps across rocky landscapes. Whenever he feels lonely, he carries with him an “animal metaphysicum”, which originated in his paintings. Sad-is-fiction portrays Sadkowsky as a visionary dreamer who – although he is in fact a father, artist, lover and, above all, a man with, to put it mildly, a gift of the gab – resists being pigeonholed in any way. In Sad-is-fiction,Murer works for the first time with direct sound and, for the first time, employs a colleague in the shape of cameraman Fritz E. Maeder.

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A descent into an illustrated, monochromatic world of macabre creatures of increasing intensity.

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The poet Urban Gwerder and his artist friends used to produce multimedia shows called Poëtenz (Poetence). Soon, FMM’s portrait film Chicorée became the focus and principal activity of these soirées. This ironic, poetic picture of Gwerder’s family life in black-and-white, with colour sequences that conjure up the poet’s flights into a dream world, culminates in an outdoors action-writing sequence and a leap into the clouds. Gwerder dreams he is Salvador Dalì, Alfred Jarry, the Beatles and Frank Zappa. He makes fun of conventional forms of protest, and FMM faithfully catches every inspiration and crazy notion: a kitchen appliance becomes a larger-than-life monster, the head of the neighbour, a socialist bookseller, turns red – hand-coloured on the negative –, the family eats spaghetti and dreams of suckling pig; the young son looks for his fairy-tale parents in a labyrinth of mirrors… Chicorée is a silent film with live music played by Celly Pastorini as the film was projected.

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A young man is balancing on a rope. A young woman with a pistol appers. In the middle of war noise, they won’t to bury him, when he suddenly awakes… A very early short from Murer and a key study for his later (and phantastic!!!) film “Pazifik – oder die Zufriedenen”. It’s a poetic aproach, which mixes up passion, love and fear of war.

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Sylvan is about a dying father and his three sons, who all want the inheritance for themselves; which unexpectedly gives the old man new vitality. All five characters are played by Sylvan Gunten.

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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.

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A woman confronts her past – and invents her future. Seventy-six-year-old Elise knows exactly how she will spend the final years of her life: living with Paul, to whom she has been happily married for 50 years, in their villa on Zürichberg till her last breath, and tenderly cared for by Angela, their faithful housekeeper. But then Angela is discovered by the theatre and hired for a stage play. Paul hits a man with his '68 Maserati and subsequently becomes friends with him; Elise passionately kisses a young veterinarian.

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Vitus tells the story of a highly-gifted boy (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for him.

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A year on an Alpine farm: an older couple have two children, Belli, who wanted to be a teacher, and the younger Franzi, deaf, and although he works like a man, child-like. Belli teaches him. In his work, he can become frustrated, so when he throws an expensive mower over a cliff in a fit of pique, his father banishes him to the outskirts of the farm, where he uses pubescent energy to break rocks and build walls and cairns. (It's the tradition of the father's family, called "The Irascibles" by neighbors, to spend puberty doing this.) Belli visits him and they begin sleeping together. By winter, the boy is back in the house and Belli is pregnant. Soon her parents must know.

Open details →

Without knowing it, Alfred and Julia live in a land of pure invention. It is the richest and most beautiful land in the world. From a height, this land looks like a piece of felt, from close up like a clean and tiny park. The footpaths are lined with benches and the streets with banks. Alfred and Julia have been married for 8 years, are childless, and live on the 16th floor of a new building. Thanks to their various crises, they have got to know each other somewhat better, but their most outstanding characteristic remains their mediocrity. On Friday, August 12th 1977, a mysterious epidemic breaks out in their country. The mass media ensure that the news is widely broadcast. The authorities order a ban on information, but those concerned break their imposed silence. On Sunday evening, it becomes known that the epidemic was nomore than a kind of "dress rehearsal" for a real emergency. Alfred and Julia continue to live in a land of pure invention - but now they are conscious of the fact.

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