Synopsis
A Swiss filmmaker (S.) and his camera team are working on a documentary film project in New York. They research the theme of loneliness. Twelve million people live in New York City; 7.5 million of them are singles, living alone. An impressive background for the project.
Loneliness is a flourishing industry in New York. Numerous companies and organisations offer their services for singles and those seeking partners. Lea and Marcy for example, two go-ahead ladies, offer courses for singles with the title ‘Fifty ways to meet your lover’. The two of them teach lonely men and women the ‘know-how’, needed to find a partner.
Another company of this kind organizes so-called ‘TV-Production Single Evenings’, where participants learn how to use video techniques. But that is incidental. Top of everyone’s list is finding a partner through the course.
‘Single Date Line’ is another concept – the search for a partner through an answering service. The telephone is everywhere. ‘Pandora’s Box’ is a set-up where lonely men can satisfy their sexual needs – over telephone and against payment of 30 dollars a session.
S. explores it all with journalist thoroughness and records everything on film. Initially distanced, but as time goes by he finds himself more and more involved personally. He cannot get a woman, he saw on the flight to New York, out of his mind. All that he knows is her name, Michéle, and that she studies music in Boston…
His telephone quest does not bring anything and he decides to go to Boston. There he visits all the music schools and puts up posters in the streets. Finally Michéle gets in touch. S. falls in love. The film story meets finally his personal situation. Distance is no longer possible. A few weeks later Michéle visits him in New York. They talk about being in love and their fears for a steady relationship. It is clear that there can be no future together for them.
Shooting is completed, S. returns to Switzerland, to finish the film. He sits in front of the monitor and manipulates a sequence in which Michéle declares her love. S. plays and replays his tapes letting Michéle say over and over again: I love you,…
William Norman McLaren, LL. D. was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher whose work is best known in France. He directed more than 100 films.
Paulus Henrique Benedictus Cox, known as Paul Cox, was a Dutch-Australian filmmaker who has been recognised as "Australia's most prolific film auteur".
Péter Forgács is a Hungarian media artist and independent filmmaker. He is best known for his "Private Hungary" series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.
Steff Gruber is a film director, photographer, author, entrepreneur and telecommunications and internet pioneer.
Peter Raymont is a Canadian filmmaker and producer and the president of White Pine Pictures, an independent film, television and new media production company based in Toronto. Among his films are Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005), A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (2007), The World Stopped Watching (2003) and The World Is Watching (1988). The 2011 feature documentary West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson and 2009's Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould were co-directed with Michèle Hozer.
Moritz de Hadeln is a Swiss documentary film director and photographer, who became a Film Festival director. He was the founder of Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel. He also headed the Locarno International Film Festival from 1972 to 1977, the Berlin International Film Festival from 1980 to 2001 and the Venice International Film Festival in 2002 and 2003. He was also a member of the jury at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival.
Asa Mader is an American film director, screenwriter and visual artist.
Moon in Taurus is a 1980 film directed by Swiss filmmaker Steff Gruber.
Location Africa is a 1987 documentary film by Swiss filmmaker Steff Gruber.
Denis Côté is a Canadian independent filmmaker and producer living in Quebec, of Brayon origin. His experimental films have been shown at major film festivals around the world.
Frank's Cock is a 1993 Canadian short film written and directed by Mike Hoolboom. The eight-minute production stars Callum Keith Rennie as an unnamed narrator who discusses his relationship with his partner, Frank. The two met while the narrator was a teenager and spent nearly ten years together. Frank has since been diagnosed with AIDS, and the narrator fears his death. The story was based on the experience of one of Hoolboom's friends at People With AIDS, which Hoolboom adapted after receiving a commission to create a short film about breaking up.
Daniela Ambrosoli is a Swiss entrepreneur, founder and president of the Pierino Ambrosoli Foundation, and film director.
Mazhar Zaidi is a British Pakistani film producer, artist, journalist, columnist and documentary director. He has produced several issue based documentaries and campaigns. He has developed, managed and delivered large international projects on CVE and produced digital campaigns on rights based issues for leading international non-governmental organisations including UKAid, IRC, CWS, creative Associates and Asia Foundation. He is best known for producing the 2013 Pakistani film Zinda Bhaag, which earned him international recognition and accolades and became the country's first entry to Academy Awards after a gap of over 50 years. The film also won many international awards. One of his films Gardaab which was set in extremist violence prone neighbourhoods of Karachi, screened at London Indian Film Festival in June 2017 and Jeewan Hathi was screened at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland in August 2017. He along with his partners Meenu Gaur and Farjad Nabi also recently curated an art exhibition titled Art SabKa focussing on contemporary art inspired by Pakistani Cinema.
Eliza Hittman is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer from New York City. She has won multiple awards for her film Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award—both for best screenplay.
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 with director/producer Andrea Staka. All of his films have been theatrically released 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 camerawork 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.
Gabriel Mascaro is a Brazilian visual artist and film director.
Philippe Lesage is a Canadian film director and screenwriter from Quebec. Originally a documentary filmmaker, he moved into narrative feature filmmaking in the 2010s with the films Copenhague: A Love Story, The Demons and Genesis (Genèse).
Kamal Aljafari - also written Kamal Jafari is a Palestinian artist, film director and producer.
The 75th annual Locarno Festival opened on 3 August 2022 in Locarno, Switzerland with film Bullet Train by David Leitch. The 75th edition of Locarno Film Festival celebrated as diamond jubilee edition screened 226 films including 105 world premieres and 3 international premieres. It hosted retrospective screenings of Douglas Sirk's films in its Retrospettiva section.
