Marcel
- SWITZERLAND / 1962 / No Dialogue / B&W / Digital File (Original: 8mm) / 18 min
Director, Script, Producer: Fredi M. Murer
Music: Edgar Varèse
Source: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern
A day in the life of Marcel, an 11-year-old boy. We see him flying a small glider over wide plains, or wandering into a no man’s land at the end of the railroad track. After making his way through a forest, a quarry, and an abandoned house, eventually he loses his glider, but his adventure continues as life and death mingle in this mystical world made of light and shadow. About this film, Murer said, “I had to leave traditional Swiss cinema behind in order to discover something different.” It was his first film, shot on 8mm, and shows the influence of Pudovkin and Eisenstein.
Pacific—or the Contented
Pazifik—oder die Zufriedenen- SWITZERLAND / 1965 / No Dialogue / Part Color, B&W / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 60 min
Director, Script, Photography, Editing, Producer: Fredi M. Murer
Cast: Sylvan Guntern, Jean-Marc Seiler, Erich Frei, Mario Beretta, Augustin Erb, Daniel Bamert, Fredi M. Murer
Source: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern
Seven young people who are all around twenty years old live communally in an old house called Villa Pazifik. The house is set to be demolished at any moment. For the young people, today is their final supper, and we see them making a ruckus outside the house. The atmosphere in some ways resembles that of a private film made among friends. Seven episodes are inserted into this space. They are portraits of each of the friends, and at the same time might be called poetic prophecies foretelling each of their futures. This film served as the basis for Murer’s recognition as an experimental filmmaker, and it makes use of a variety of methods, including calligraphic animations, time lapses, hand coloring, and scratching. The original version was four hours long and was shown with a live performance soundtrack, but it was edited to one hour for general distribution.
Balance
- SWITZERLAND / 1965 / No Dialogue / B&W / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 12 min
Director, Script, Photography, Editing, Producer: Fredi M. Murer
Cast: Augustin Erb
Source: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern
This film is one of the episodes used in the original version of Pacific—or the Contented. It was originally based on the childhood dream of Augustin Erb—who plays the main character—to become a tightrope artist. A man comes to the forest alone. He pulls a rope out of his bag, ties it to the trunks of two trees, applies makeup to his face, and begins crossing the rope. A woman shoots the man with a pistol. After he falls, two men wearing black carry away his dead body. Scenes of war are spliced into the scene of the funeral procession: air-raid sirens wail and bombs explode. In the same way that the fireworks explode in the sky at the beginning of the film, dreams are again ripped apart by the fragments of reality.
Sylvan
- SWITZERLAND / 1965 / No Dialogue / B&W, Color / Digital File (Original: 16mm) / 12 min
Director, Script, Photography, Editing, Producer: Fredi M. Murer
Cast: Sylvan Guntern
Source: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern
Like Balance, this work was originally one of the episodes that made up Pacific—or the Contented, and became an independent film when the latter was re-edited. Sylvan Guntern plays all four of the characters, and is made to seem like multiple people with the skilled shooting and editing employed. Three men surround their father on his deathbed in the basement of an apartment building. They are after the inheritance that is to be left by the father, and each wants to receive all of it. They fight, eventually killing each other so that none remain. Afterwards, the father, who had died, returns to life, and the inheritance returns to him. This work shows some of the strongest narrative elements out of all of Murer’s early films.