Swiss animated film is in the most creative phase of its 100-year history. Never before have so many films been produced, never before have they been so artistically and technically diverse and so internationally successful. This is not least because, from great masters like Georges Schwizgebel to young graduates like Samantha Aquilino, several generations of authors are active, each with their own influences, visions and stories.
These ten successful and formative films from the past six years provide an insight into current Swiss animated film. In Darwin's Notebook, Georges Schwizgebel poetically explores a chapter of colonialism, while Jonathan Laskar evokes a dark moment in history in a compelling and haunting way in The Record. Claudius Gentinetta (Selfies) and Maja Gehrig (Average Happiness) take an equally experimental and humorous look at current social phenomena, while Samantha Aquilino reflects on growing up between cultures in an associative and fragmented way in Sometimes I Don't Know Where The Sun. In contrast, Elie Chapuis' and Dustin Rees' melancholy relationship stories Canard and Signs are more classic in terms of dramaturgy, while Lorenz Wunderle's Coyote takes off into a surreal nightmare in glowing colours.
Christian Gasser
Programme
Bob the plumber is hired to fix a broken pipe and, to his surprise, ends up in a gay fetish club.
An electrician follows his nightly routine setting up signs in the city. He goes through life unnoticed and out of touch with the world, until he realises which signs he should be paying attention to.
Vladimir and Olga raise ducks on a small isolated farm in the countryside. They hope for a child, but this expectation soon turns into a nightmare.
During a PowerPoint presentation, statistical diagrams are breaking free from the strait-jacket of their coordinates. A trip into the sensual world of statistics begins. Pie charts are melting, arrow diagrams twisting, scatter plots, bar graphs and stock market curves join in a collective climax.
A lobster, a cat and a deer. Dangerous rebels. A human, sometimes here and sometimes there. He wants connection. He comes across the deer. He meets the cat. They reject each other. Big disappointment. Our human follows the way of the sun, to reach the animals through sharing an apple.
The return of three anglicised natives to their county or the beginning of a meeting with the modern world that will destroy them.
An antique music instrument dealer receives a magical vinyl record from a traveller. “It reads your mind and plays your lost memories”. Obsessed by this endless record, the antique dealer listens to it again and again, and the memories re-emerge.
A face is born out of chaos. It struggles to exist. It struggles to find its purpose. It struggles to sit on a chair. In fact, it struggles with many things. But thank God, it’s trying.
A coyote loses his wife and children from an attack of wolfs. Anguished from human emotions he‘s trying to process the experience. Besides grief and delusion, evil takes up more and more space.
In a veritable firework display of digital self-portraits, hundreds of quaint, embarrassing and dreadfully disturbing selfies were arranged in a unique short film composition. Single photos, artistically reworked, consolidate to form a ghastly grin that outshines the abyss of human existence.
