“Lightmaker” makes its première – at last!

"Lightmaker" has taken 15 years to reach the big screen. Yello Music & Motion Pictures

Some 15 years of preparation went into a film by Swiss director Dieter Meier, which has been given its première at the Berlin film festival.

Meier says that during the course of his work on “Lightmaker” he twice changed its title, was involved in some six years of litigation with the company processing the film he had shot, and was forced to change his original co-producers.

Then there were technical problems caused by the complexity of the story he had created with his co-writers. “It was like finding myself in a jungle,” he told swissinfo, “with 30 different stories to relate.”

But eventually Meier found a way through his creative jungle, and arrived at the finished script. “It was as though I was a mountaineer who planned a three-week climb in the Himalayas,” he said, “and become lost there for four years.”

The result of the years of toil is a fantasy film about a young New York violinist who is lured into the underground realm of King Osso by the king’s daughter. Osso’s doomed empire can only be saved if the violinist plays his “magic” strings to create light and live there – hence the title “Lightmaker”.

Meier – who apart from being a film director belongs to the Zurich techno pop group Yello – shot the film in English. The cast includes Rod Steiger as King Osso.

swissinfo