GESCHICHTE DER NACHT (Clemens Klopfenstein, Switzerland/West Germany 1978, 24.11., guest: Clemens Klopfenstein) The nocturnal wanderings of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's novel Ulyssesinspired Clemens Klopfenstein to make a unique experiment in film and camera technique. For 150 nights, he used highly sensitive black and white film material and a miniature sound recording device to capture the atmosphere of more than a dozen European cities in the hours after midnight. As the sounds and images are edited together, the footage from Switzerland, Turkey, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Italy, France, Spain, England, Ireland, and Germany solidifies into the physiognomy of a European metropolis with a wide geographical expanse. The most far-flung of locations and original sound recordings are amalgamated into a unique fictional night space of sound and vision.
DAS SCHLESISCHE TOR (Clemens Klopfenstein, West Germany 1982, 24.11.) "Images and sounds from Berlin, Tokyo, and Hong Kong mixed together and fading into each other supported by Westernized Chinese music generate a feeling of homesickness and wanderlust. Of the yearning to be somewhere and nowhere ... the feeling of those 'terribles 5-heures du soir', where you have to reach for the bottle, the telephone, or old letters until the calming night falls. In addition, this small film is supposed to make the audience feel the Earth's roundness, morning in Tokyo is evening at Schlesisches Tor: the shadow that passes around the Earth" (Clemens Klopfenstein).
E NACHTLANG FÜÜRLAND (Clemens Klopfenstein, Remo Legnazzi, Switzerland 1981, 25.11., guest: Clemens Klopfenstein) The disillusioned Max still lives in the shadow of '68, with his only remaining way of defining himself being his role as a veteran of the student movement. In the midst of the youth protests in Bern in 1981, he meets the young, enthusiastic Chrige (Christine Lauterburg). She points out his only chance at putting forward some sort of contradiction; as the newsreader of the state radio station, he could broadcast his own news. Over the course of a drunken night, the two of them decide to end the early morning news with the happy message that the glaciers have melted, those in charge of public order have fled to areas whose coldness better corresponds to the rigidity of their systems of control, and that palm trees now tower over Bern.
DER RUF DER SIBYLLA (Clemens Klopfenstein, Switzerland 1982/85, 25.11., guest: Clemens Klopfenstein) A modern couple slips into a fairy tale: jealous painter Balz (Max Rüdlinger) is in Italy and pestering his girlfriend on the phone, an actress named Clara (Christine Lauterburg), because of her lover. Balz wishes his rival bad luck, whereupon the latter does indeed fall flat on his face. After he finally manages to get his girlfriend to shut her mouth, who has by now arrived at his place and won't stop talking, Max notices that drinking a schnaps helps his evil desires become reality. But Clara equally discovers a magic potion that gives her the power to transform things, such as day into night.
DAS SCHWEIGEN DER MÄNNER (Clemens Klopfenstein,Switzerland 1997, 26.11., guest: Clemens Klopfenstein) Max (Max Rüdlinger) is unhappy, because he's Swiss: "Switzerland is beautiful but boring". For his friend Polo (Polo Hofer), who can enjoy eating grilled sausages on their shared mountain walks without questioning the meaning of life, Max is typically Swiss, for no people are less satisfied with themselves than the Swiss. When Max tries to escape Switzerland on foot by heading to Italy, it soon dawns on him that you can't escape yourself so easily. "I feel like I'm on a home trainer in front of olive tree wallpaper". And at the very latest when he blusters about sausage salad in the shadow of the pyramids, it becomes clear that in Egypt too he still carries Switzerland with him wherever he goes.
DIE VOGELPREDIGT ODER DAS SCHREIEN DER MÖNCHE (Clemens Klopfenstein, Switzerland/Italy 2005, 26.11., guest Clemens Klopfenstein) Two aging actors (Polo Hofer, Max Rüdlinger), a tragicomic pair, set out in search of their former director (Klopfenstein) in order to convince him of their new film idea: a fiery, colorful work set in Africa with lashing of crime and sex, the sequel to a successful film they worked on together many years before. Exhausted after getting lost and several further mishaps in the Apennines, the two of them manage to find the director, who has withdrawn to live a life of austerity and anti-consumerism in melancholy Umbria. The director isn't swayed by the actors' mainstream project and persuades them help him shoot some test footage for a Franciscan film. When he disappears in the woods to create a "massive wide shot", the two of them start badmouthing him in their monks' costumes - "art filmmaker, matinee genius, demented Klopfenstein" - which they subsequently regret when they realize that their radio microphones are still on. "Whoever doesn't quietly laugh to themselves for at least an entire day after watching this stroke of genius is mentally obdurate." (Michael Wunderlich)
DER MEISTER UND MAX (Marcel Derek Ramsay, Switzerland 2015, 27.11.) "How sick it makes me to always be hanging around in these Klopfenstein films": Max (Max Rüdlinger) is the epitome of the complaining procrastinator, who constantly dreams of breaking out of bourgeois convention, but is never quite able to find the courage to do so. We know him from Klopfenstein’s films, where he is constantly condemned to just wander around together with Christine (Christine Lauterburg) and Polo (Polo Hofer). With DER MEISTER UND MAX, Marcel Derek Ramsay creates an enjoyable "recycled film" from Klopfenstein's collected works, which miraculously produces an entirely new work over which the mischievous shadow of Klopfenstein always hangs. A loving, respectful tribute to the master.
TRANSES – REITER AUF DEM TOTEN PFERD (Clemens Klopfenstein, Switzerland 1979–82, 27.11.) uses the camera to describe the heady feeling of getting away from it all. Lengthy shots from a car and later from trains cutting right across the European continent, moving from north to south and through nights of snow, rain, and cloud, passing through different places to enter a landscape far away from civilization's restrictions, all of which exude a liberating fascination on the audience. For his nightly wanderings, Clemens Klopfenstein looked for landscapes that may not be devoid of people, but still remain unaltered by their activity: solitary places that bring people to their senses again. TRANSES is a subjective camera journey between a state of trance and weightlessness, a further development of GESCHICHTE DER NACHT.An event with the friendly support of the Swiss Embassy. With thanks to Cinémathèque Lausanne, Stiftung memoriav, Stiftung eikones, Edition Grumbach, Lichtspiel-Archiv, Cinema Copain Group.
