Filmmaker in Focus:Peter Liechti,Switzerland
 Born in St. Gall in 1951, PeterLiechti completed his studies at the Zurich University of Artand Design with a diploma as a secondary-school drawing teacher and subsequently freelanced as a graphics and drawing instructor. He spent 1981–82 in Crete, where he devoted himself to painting and writing. He embarked on his first film experiments and film performances in 1983. A co-founder of the K59 (KinoK) programme cinema in St. Gall in 1985, Liechti also belonged to the Achziger Film group in Zurich between 1988 and 1995. The first retrospectives of Liechti’s films were soon being staged in Graz, Geneva, Berne and Zurich. Since 1990 he has been living and working in Zurich, with sporadic sojourns in Wald, Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden.
His worsk:（Bericht einer Mumie，2008）、（Hardcore Chamber music，2006）、（Namibia Crossings，2004）(Lucky Jack，2003)、（(Martha’s，Garden 1997)、(Signer’s Suitcase，1996)、（A Hole in the Hat，1991）、（Roman Signer，1990）、(Grimsel : An Eye, Witness Report,1989) 、（Kick That Habit，1989）、(Theatre of Hope，1987)、(A Trip to the Mountains，1986)、(Vertical/Horizontal，1985)
Signer’s Suitcase
1996/16mm/35mm, DVD/ colour and b/w80’
Script: Peter Liechti
Camera: Peter Liechti
Sound: Peter Guyer, Res Balzli, Ingrid St?deli
Editing: Dieter Gr?nicher
Music: Knut Remond
Artist Action: Roman Signer
Production: Peter Liechti in co-production with Rec TV, Berne and the Alfred Richterich Stiftung
World Rights: Peter Liechti
Original Version: Swiss German / various
About the film
Signers Koffer (Signer’s Suitcase) is a kind of road movie that takes us right across Europe. From the Swiss Alps to eastern Poland, from Stromboli to Iceland. Always following the magically charged “groove” of the landscape. A wide-ranging attempt to find the ideal travelling speed. Roman Signer uses his very personal bag of tricks to mark the stations along the way: strikingly simple operations brimming with subtle humour. But the film is also a journey through mental states. A tightrope walk between whimsy and melancholy. Danger – both physical and psychological – becomes a stimulus to the senses. Sudden plunges, abrupt mood changes shape the rhythm and atmosphere of this cinematic journey.
Lucky Jack
2003 35mm, DVD colour 90’
Script: Peter Liechti
Camera: Peter Liechti
Sound: Dieter Lengacher
Editing: Tania Stocklin
Music: Norbert Moslang
Text: Peter Liechti
Voice: Hanspeter Müller
Production: Peter Liechti, SF DRS
World Rights: Liechti Filmproduktion
Original Version: German, Swiss German
About the film
Hans im Glück (Lucky Jack) is the story of a man who sets out to shake his smoking habit. He decides to hike from Zurich, where he currently lives, to St. Gall, where he grew up and started smoking. He is prepared to keep repeating the journey – always choosing another route- until he has achieved his goal: finally becoming a non-smoker!
He hopes that through the ritual cross-country trek and the strict smoking ban he imposes on him-self along the way, he will be able to rid himself of some emotional baggage, and of his addiction.On his search for the sources of his addiction, the haunting yet comic quest for his spiritual home increasingly becomes the central theme. All of the images, “insights” and memories he comes across on his non-smoking treks ultimately form the basis of a cinematic ride through heaven and hell in his own country – with the occasional foray far beyond national borders.
Hans im Glück is a reckoning and a declaration of love. A road movie for pedestrians, a regionalist film for the homeless. It is dedicated to all the smokers and other addicts, to all the unlucky devils who have managed to remain decent anyway – and of course to Lucky Jacks everywhere.
Namibia Crossing-Spirints and Limit
2004 35mm, DVD colour 92’
Script: Peter Liechti
Camera: Peter Guyer, Peter Liechti
Sound: Dieter Meyer
Editing: Lorendana Cristelli
Music: Hambana Sound Company
Text: Peter Liechti
Voice: Hanspeter Müller
Production: Reck Filmproduktion,
co-production Liechti Filmproduktion
World Rights: Reck Filmproduktion
Original Version: Various/English/ German
About the film
Hambana Sound Company: 12 musicians and singers from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Switzerland and Russia go on tour together. Twelve different dreams on the way to a country that, like the newly founded ensemble, has to reinvent itself from scratch: Namibia, formerly German Southwest Africa. The communal quest for the deeper sources of music progressively metamorphoses into individual borderline experiences, above all through the encounter with groups of local musicians in remote provinces – euphoric, sad, intense encounters...
Namibia Crossings is a journey through a country of archaic beauty, full of bizarre contrasts and contradictions – a constant echo to the polyphony of the mental landscapes created by the highs and lows of our ensemble.
Grimsel : An Eye, Witness Report
1990 16mm,DVD colour 50’
Script:Res Balzli,Peter Liechti
Camera:Peter Liechti,Peter Guyer (assistant)
Sound:Andreas Litmanowitsch
Editing:Pius Morger
Music:Martin Schütz
With:Adolf Urweider,Albert Streich, Dr.Klaus Ammann
Production:Balzli & Cie.,Nidau
World Rights:Peter Liechti
Original Version:Swiss German
About film
Grimsel-West was the name of a project for the expansion of the hydroelectric plant in the Hasli Valley. Submitted on 30 June 1988, its realization seems fairly improbable for the moment. Originally conceived as an expression of opposition to the construction of a new dam, the film tries to fathom the undercurrent of apprehension caused by such plans to exploit the environment.
Kick That Habit
1989 16mm,DVD colour b/w 45’
Script:Peter Liechti
Camera:Peter Liechti,Thomas Imbach (assistant)
Sound:Norbert M?slang,Andy Guhl, Thomas Imbach
Editing:Dieter Gr?nicher
Music:Norbert M?slang, Andy Guhl, Knut Remond
With:Norbert M?slang, Andy Guhl, Knut Remond,
Thomas Imbach, Carole Forster, Bea Hadorn, Monika Sennhauser, Alex Hanimann, Roman Signer, Peter Kamm, Peter Liechti
Production:Peter Liechti
World Rights:Peter Liechti
Original Version:No text/dialogue
About film
Kick That Habit is neither a conventional portrait of a musician nor a psychedelic illustration of Recycling Noise Music or video-clip tarted up with documentary frills. It is a subtle attempt to mesh a visual and an acoustic world of expression that ends up creating a fine-spun synthesis. The portrait of two musicians (Norbert Mslang and Andy Guhl) who recycle discarded electronic equipment to produce innovative sounds is the starting point of an enigmatic search for lost, destroyed, deranged experiential worlds. Footage of the two musicians’ rehearsals and concerts is juxtaposed with visual shards of the film-maker’s own memory. The sense of doom that Peter Liechti can coax out of everyday occurrences is vitally present in the music, too. These autonomous parts are interwoven with a “Trip to the Mountains”, to the Alpstein, and down to Lake Constance – two magic pillars delimiting eastern Switzerland, the native region of both the film-maker and the musicians. |