Fredi M. Murer

The day after the night of the full moon, 12 children all 10 years of age are found to be missing in the four language regions of Switzerland. The police and the media reassuringly claim that there are plenty of leads and clues. No kidnapper comes forward to contradict them. At the end of one week, all the parents receive the exact same letter from the children, written in cryptic language. By the next full moon they must have deciphered the letter and complied with all its requirements, or else… A dramatic-ironic tale that reveals the current state of Switzerland. Switzerland as a metaphor. Or: a plea for less logic and more imagination in our world.

The Swiss National Association for the Storage of Radioactive Waste plans to build a permanent waste disposal site in Wellenberg, Canton of Nidwalden. A regional citizens’ action group is formed to protest against it. Murer not only interviews supporters and opponents, in particular the Alpine farmers living on the Wellenberg. He starts by raising the question of a time-scale that is out of all proportion to the human lifespan as a measure of time. Fredi Murer dedicated the film to the “children and children’s children”, both of the farmers on the Wellenberg and of all of us. For the first time, Murer deals explicitly with the ‘can-do’ generation that lives and works as though they were the last people on this earth.

“Höhenfeuer” is both a story of childhood and of a love affair: The deaf-born “Bub” and his sister “Belli” live with their parents on a remote farm in the mountains. The father intentionally resists the modern age: “I'd rather beat him to death than put him in a home”. After school Belli is not only a servant in her own home but also her younger brother's teacher. From early childhood, they have been an inseparable pair. They love one another. “Holy Mother of God, what sort of children have I?” wails the resigned mother, when the two children do things that are not “normal”. This is just the beginning of the story… Had the film been made 100 years ago – it would have been a saga.

"Grauzone" is the film by Fredi M. Murer that anticipated the 1980s movement in 1978. A mysterious epidemic haunts Switzerland. The symptoms: a sudden urge to go outside, sudden melancholy, general sensitization. An unintentionally published advertisement informs about the wave of illness and triggers uncertainty, which also penetrates the uniform suburban idyll of Zurich. Julia and her husband Alfred live here, who, in addition to his work as a commercial employee, leads a double life as an eavesdropping specialist and is increasingly plunged into a crisis of meaning.

An ethnographic documentary film in three movements, along the lines of a symphony. The three movements reflect the three differing stages of development co-existing within the mountainous canton. In Göschenen, at the foot of the Gotthard, which straddles Europe’s North-South axis, industrialization took hold long ago, and the mountain farmers of old now work in offices and factories. In the Schächtental, however, the traditional family-centric mountain economy survives. Meanwhile, the village of Bristen in the Maderanertal is in the throes of upheaval: while the traditional farming communities still exist, nigh on 250 inhabitants leave the area daily to go to work or school.

H.R. Giger became known all over the world as the designer of the aliens in Ridley Scott's feature film ALIEN. In this documentary about H.R. Giger's work, which was made many years before, the artist's creative process and the interplay between conscious and unconscious influences are the focus. Statements by experts and contemporaries address the question of the artist's position and social responsibility.

The theme of Fredi M. Murer's contribution to the episode film Swissmade is "Switzerland after us". Murer's episode takes place in the year 2069. An "integrated citizen with a latent tendency to become an unintegrated citizen" is commissioned by the "Brain Center" to produce a film report about the unknown mission of a foreign being. The alien being is an extraterrestrial designed by H. R. Giger long before ALIEN with a built-in camera and tape, which travels across the earth in the year 2069 to explore current conditions. The film reporter is Murer himself. Without exception, the performers in real life were authentic 1968 activists, some of whom later made political or artistic careers. In addition to this: Murer's freaky "Chicorée" with Urban Gwerder and one of the most spontious and colourful film ends ever.