Anka Schmid

Last updated
Anka Schmid
Born (1961-03-08) March 8, 1961 (age 62)
Zurich, Switzerland
Occupations

Anka Schmid (born March 8, 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a film director, screenwriter and video artist. She is considered a German as well as a Swiss artist.

Contents

Life and education

Anka Schmid is the eldest of three daughters of an engineer and a school teacher and grew up in Zurich, Switzerland. After finishing an all-girls high school in 1980 she began her studies in German philology. In the 1980s she was a member of a street theatre group and a music band, it was also then that she made her first experimental videos and Super 8 films. In 1984 she moved to Berlin and studied at the German Film and Television Academy DFFB (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin). During her studies at the DFFB she made a number of her own videos and short films on 16mm but also worked as a camera assistant and assistant director in professional productions. [1]

Film projects

During 1989 Schmid lived in the Hopi Reservation in Arizona in the United States. Together with Swiss artist Agnes Barmettler and the Hopi Native American James Danaqymptewa she shot the feature documentary Techqua Ikachi, Land - My Life which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. Schmid completed her studies at DFFB in 1991 with her feature film Behind Locked Doors (original title Hinter verschlossenen Türen) which won several awards. She has since been living and working as an independent film maker and assistant director in Germany, Switzerland, France, Argentina and the US. [2]

In 1994 her son was born in Berlin. Shortly after she finished her film essay Magic Matterhorn which she shot in Zermatt, California and Berlin. Four years later, in 1998, she and her son moved from Berlin to Zurich. There, apart from working on her own film and art projects, Schmid also started working as a lecturer at universities as well as film and media schools. Additionally she has been conducting workshops for children and teenagers, showing them how to create an animated films. [3] [4] Her feature documentary Against All Odds (original title Mit dem Bauch durch die Wand) was awarded with the so-called Zürcher Filmpreis, the film award of the city of Zurich in 2011. [5] Her latest feature documentary Wild Women – Gentle Beasts about female animal tamers in the circus was shot and shown in Germany, France, Russia and Switzerland. Schmid has also had numerous exhibitions and art-interventions since the late 1990s. [6]

Filmography (selection)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Frei</span> Swiss filmmaker and film producer

Christian Frei is a Swiss filmmaker and film producer. He is mostly known for his films War Photographer (2001), The Giant Buddhas (2005) and Space Tourists (2009).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Štaka</span> Swiss film director (born 1973)

Andrea Štaka is a Swiss film director and screenwriter, best known for winning the Golden Leopard at the 59th Locarno International Film Festival in 2006 for her film, Das Fräulein.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ursula Meier</span> French-Swiss film director and screenwriter

Ursula Meier is a French-Swiss film director and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zurich University of the Arts</span> Art school in Zürich, Switzerland

Zurich University of the Arts has approximately 2,500 students, which makes it the largest arts university in Switzerland. The university was established in 2007, following the merger between Zurich's School of Art and Design (HGKZ) and the School of Music, Drama, and Dance (HMT). ZHdK is one of four universities affiliated to Zürcher Fachhochschule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniela Ambrosoli</span>

Daniela Ambrosoli is a Swiss entrepreneur, founder and president of the Pierino Ambrosoli Foundation, and film director.

Ciro Cappellari is film director, cinematographer, and screenwriter based in Berlin, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Imbach</span>

Thomas Imbach is an independent filmmaker based in Zürich, Switzerland. With his production company Bachim Films, Imbach produced his own work until 2007. He then founded Okofilm Productions together with director/producer Andrea Staka. All of his films have been released theatrically and Imbach has won numerous awards for his work, both in Switzerland and abroad. With Well Done (1994) and Ghetto (1997) Imbach established his trademark audio-visual style, which is based on a combination of cinema- verité camera-work and fast-paced editing. His fiction features Happiness is a Warm Gun, as well as Lenz (2006), I Was a Swiss Banker (2007) and the fictive autobiography Day is Done (2011) all premiered at the Berlinale. His latest feature film Mary Queen of Scots celebrated its premiere in Locarno and at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. His latest documentary Nemesis celebrated its international premiere at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2020, where it received the Prize for Best Cinematography. Thomas Imbach is currently considered one of the most unconventional and consistent Swiss filmmakers.

Samir Jamal al Din, known professionally as Samir, is a Swiss filmmaker, film producer and director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juerg Neuenschwander</span>

Juerg Neuenschwander is a Swiss independent documentary film director, film producer, politician and founding member of Container TV AG for film and television in Bern, Switzerland. He is a media consultant and lecturer in film and audiovisual design; director of short and feature-length documentary films, of artistic projects and interactive Multimedia productions.

Aya Domenig is a film-maker and anthropologist of Japanese–Swiss origin.

Techqua Ikachi, Land – My Life is a feature documentary by Swiss/German director Anka Schmid, the Swiss artist Agnes Barmettler and the Hopi Native American James Danaqyumptewa from 1989. The documentary shows the history and life of Native Americans of the Hopi tribe in Arizona, in particular their problems with the American government in their fight for sovereignty. It is being told from the perspective of the Hopi tribe.

Magic Matterhorn (1995) is an essayistic documentary by Swiss director Anka Schmid about the meaning of ones homeland, its clichés and reality. The mountain Matterhorn is the starting point for the portrayal of a ‚part-time‘ farmer from the Swiss mountain village Zermatt, a professional Swiss yodeler in Disneyland, California and the cabaret group called Geschwister Pfister.

<i>Wild Women: Gentle Beasts</i> 2015 Swiss film

Wild Women: Gentle Beasts is a feature documentary by Swiss director Anka Schmid, released in 2015. Schmid documents the life and work of female animal tamers from four nations: Egypt, France, Germany and Russia. The world premiere was at the film festival Visions du Réel in Nyon in April 2015. The international premiere was at the Hof International Film Festival in October 2015.

Mano Film is a Swiss film production company located in Zurich, Switzerland. It was founded in 1987 by Anka Schmid, Agnes Barmettler and Rachel Schmid and produced several feature films. In 2001 Anka Schmid became the sole proprietress. The production company has since specialized in producing interdisciplinary film and art projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Fehlbaum</span> Swiss film director

Tim Fehlbaum is a Swiss film director.

<i>Against All Odds</i> (2011 film) 2011 Swiss film

Against All Odds is a 2011 Swiss documentary film directed by Anka Schmid. The long term documentary accompanies three teenage mothers, their kids and the fathers during the course of four years. One can follow how the girls grow up to be young women. The documentary had its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival 2011 in the section Generations. The world premiere was in January 2011 at the Solothurn Film Festival.

Behind Locked Doors is a feature film by Swiss/German director Anka Schmid from 1991. The ensemble-film shows the everyday life of 17 inhabitants of an apartment building in Berlin Kreuzberg.

<i>Happiness is a Warm Gun</i> (film) 2001 film by Thomas Imbach

Happiness Is a Warm Gun is a feature film by the Swiss director Thomas Imbach, who stages the life and death story of the lovers Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian. Between documentary-like scenes and fictional acting, as well as archive material, the narrative of a love story is created, rolled up from its end. Happiness Is a Warm Gun premiered at the International Locarno Film Festival in August 2001. The film won the Zurich Film Prize 2001 and was nominated for the Swiss Film Prize for best feature film and best leading actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">June Kovach</span>

June Kovach was an American-born Swiss film director, film editor and concert pianist. She was a concert pianist until 1961 when she took to working on documentary films.

La Lupa is a Swiss singer and performer known in the Alps region for her eclectic stage performances while wearing colorful, eccentric costumes.

References

  1. ↑ Irene Genhart: Ciné-Portrait Anka Schmid Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine on swissfilms.ch.
  2. ↑ Irene Genhart: Ciné-Portrait Anka Schmid Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine on swissfilms.ch.
  3. ↑ Short biography Anka Schmid on www.mitdembauch-film.ch
  4. ↑ "Anka Schmid on www.swissfilms.ch". Archived from the original on 2019-01-19. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
  5. ↑ City of Zurich: Zürcher Filmpreise 2011
  6. ↑ Irene Genhart: Ciné-Portrait Anka Schmid Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine on swissfilms.ch.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.