marion neumann
THE MUSHROOM SPEAKS by Marion Neumann (2021)
explores the healing qualities of fungi and their ability to regenerate
This personal journey takes us on a walk alongside parasites, symbionts and decomposers offering ideas of both interconnectedness and collaboration. Driven by a vision of resistance, the encounters seek possibilities of renewal and question what connects us when the world seems to be falling apart.
With mushrooms and their allies the film invites to imagine a myco-cultural (r)evolution. What if the fungus could help us address and radically change our relationship to this world ?
WAY BEYOND by Pauline Julier, 2021
At CERN, an international commission of experts closely follows the FCC
(Future Circular Collider) project, the colossal and possible successor to the current particle accelerator. With precise and elegant writing, Pauline Julier provides us with an exciting document, not bereft of humour, on this scientific adventure in which the thirst for knowledge challenges human understanding.
« NATURALES HISTORIAE » (installation vidéo, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris)
“Naturalis Historia defends the idea that humans, seeking to shape a raw, changing world, confine it with their categories of thought, which lend it a certain stability. I want to stress how much the concepts that are used to organize the diversity of the world are our own; we produce them and with them the risk of emptying the world of its essence by freezing it in a catalogue of images, landscapes, definitions, and resolutions (scientific, religious, etc.) It is the same movement as that of the volcano that snuffs out life by freezing a forest or city in place. The same drive as that of the photographic image which slices up the “real” and thus plays a part in holding in place a world to be seen and understood. It is the same illusion of the continuity of movement produced by the film image. The world is emptied of its raw vitality and organized according to representational codes that are inevitably anthropized.” Pauline Julier, 2017
WILD PLANTS by Nicolas Humbert, 2017
“Wild plants” refers to the vegetation that seeds itself in fallow and abandoned land, occupies seemingly inhospitable land and creates new habitats. But “wild plants” also refers to the people, who create their own utopias and become sources of inspiration for others. Scattered all around the world are people engaged in projects in which botanical and biographical wild growth are intimately connected with each other. Wild Plants is a cinematic journey of discovery, accompanied by questions about the relationship between humans and nature.
« THE DISPOSSESSED » (camera assistant during switzerland shooting, documentary, 2017)
The camera’s steadfast gaze carefully follows the toil of small-scale farmers across the globe and records speeches by representatives of food conglomerates and supporters of sustainable development. The documentary essay uncovers the pyramid of an agriculture industry interested only in profit, with no regard for the nutritional needs of man and the soil.
Mathieu Roy, 2017, Documentary, 182 min., HD, MiraFilm Zürich, Lowik Media, Montréal
« DESSINE MOI UNE RIVIERE » (cinema release in Switzerland 2017)
The Aire River in Geneva is being restored after 100 years of canalization, degradation and pollution. The process of restoration leads to a subtle reflection on landscape architecture and the role of Man in Nature. Guided by the drawings of the Swiss architect Georges Descombes and his Superposition group, the film meanders between seasons and stages of construction, with a soft interior music that reveals the global challenges of this small piece of territory. A large story for a tiny river. Michel Favre, 2017, Documentary, 106 min., HD, Switzerland, TRADAM SA
« MORGEN KEIN LAND » (Nowhere Near Tomorrow)
The transformations in the Arab countries don"t necessarily have a beginning, middle and an end - and not even necessarily in that order. "Nowhere Near Tomorrow" reminds us about this, and it is maybe high time.
The whole thing definitely begins and ends with a will to achieve freedom. But if you are an Iraqi refugee in Syria, the problems are hardly over, before they begin again. This is Abu Ahmed, a middle-aged Sunni Muslim family father
with six children. But he is married to the Shia Muslim Wafa and - like over two million compatriots of his - he is a refugee. Lisa Reisch, 2011, Documentary, 90 min., HD, Syria
Neue Bioskop Film, HWG-Filmproduction et Bayrischer Rundfunk
« THIS MOMENT IS NOT THE SAME »
An assembling of various viewpoints from all over the world to explore the human being’s creative potential.The friction between art and everyday life in an artist’s residence in Switzerland, generates humorous moments;
conflicting realities and everyday situations reveal the different viewpoints of living and working in this house. This film accompanies a three-year experiment, becomes itself an experiment and tells of the (seriously absurd)
human quest for happiness and freedom. Marion Neumann, 2010, Documentary, 98 min, HDV, 16mm, G, CH
Festivals: Visions du Réel, Nyon / Crossing Europe Film Festival, Linz / Ecofilm Documentary Film Festival Rhodos EPOS Films on Art, Tel Aviv
« EXIT 16 » Onondaga Nation Territory
a film portrait of Dewasenta, a Haudenosaunee clan mother. Haudenosaunee means 'People of the Longhouse', and is the name the so-called Iroquois use to refer to themselves. At the time I promised my friends in Onondaga Nation Territory that one day I would return and we would make a longer film together in which they could have their say.
Claus Biegert, 2010, Documentary, 60 min, HD, Nation Onondaga, US
« Callshop »
a familiar voice on the end of a phone line, an illusion of closeness:
the tragedy of being far away from home
Eldar Grigorian, 2005, Documentary, 45min, b/w, 16mm, Germany
« Anderer Herbst - Inna Jésien » (The other autumn)
To me, this film means a return, an encounter and at the same time, a farewell.
For the first time in my life, I was working and living in Poland, the country where I was born. The result was plain and sobering: more and more, my longing dissolved into daily routine.
But it also brought about closeness. In addition to my memories and dreams, now there was the simple look at the way things are - as it happens in a personal relationship. The other Autumn tracks this path. It is a personal act of writing history, brought together by the montage of traces, pictures, texts and places I came across. Pawel Siczek & Marion Neumann, 2003, Essai, 20min., 16mm, Poland
« Ma ngi fi - Ich bin hier » (I am here)
I am here - three Senegalese women perform their chores, bound by their everyday routines, but their fairytales link them to the realm of ghosts, of traditions, values - and the world.
Lisa Reisch, 2005, Documentary, 45min, Super16, Senegal
Festivals: International Documentary Film Festival Munich / EthnoFilmfest Berlin
« Himmelfilm » (skymovie)
What did the sky look like, when you were young? Almost everybody has their own special childhood skies and remember them to be bluer or cloudier, more dangerous or more enticing than anywhere else. This film invites us to think and look into our own past, by collecting sounds and personal whims from all over the world. Jiska Rickels & Sane Kurz