Legendary Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner dies aged 92
Tanner received an honorary Leopard award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2010 in recognition of his contribution to contemporary filmmaking.
Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott
The Geneva director Alain Tanner, whose first feature, Charles mort ou vif (Charles, Dead or Alive), heralded the beginning of the New Swiss Cinema upon its release in 1970, died on Sunday, an association bearing his name has announced.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA/gw
Español
es
Muere el legendario cineasta suizo Alain Tanner a los 92 años
Tanner was part of the so-called Group of 5, created in 1968, alongside four other directors – Michel Soutter, Jean-Louis Roy, Jean-Jacques Lagrange and Claude Goretta. Together the filmmakers were responsible for a revival of Swiss cinema that went against the grain.
Born in 1929, TannerExternal link was “a strong personality and a very independent man,” Lagrange, the last surviving member of the group, told news agency Keystone-SDA. “It’s sad news.”
The head of Swiss Film Archive, Frédéric Maire, called Tanner “a monument of [Swiss] cinema”.
“It was the New Swiss Cinema and yet his films remain modern even today,” he told Keystone-SDA.
Charles mort ou vif won Tanner the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. He went on to shoot dozens of features, picking up the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for Les Années lumière (Light Years Away, 1981) and a César for best French film for Dans la ville blanche (In the White City, 1983).
More
More
Groundbreaking films from Swiss cinema
This content was published on
The films that made Swiss cinematic history.
“[He] is without doubt the best-known Swiss filmmaker” abroad, said Lausanne-born director Lionel Baier, who added that some in Portugal even consider In the White City to be the most beautiful film ever made about Lisbon.
Tanner believed his native Switzerland was “too beautiful and too spectacular” to be filmed, Baier added, yet “he knew how to show a Swiss violence” and to look for drama in a country that had not planned for it.
In the 1960s Tanner supported the drafting of the law on cinema and public funding for Swiss films.
The Geneva native made his last feature film, Paul s’en va, in 2004. He had fought enough for culture and cinema, the director said in an interview on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
Tanner’s body of work entered the Swiss Film Archive in 2014.
This content was published on
A 36-year-old man from Ticino lost his life on Saturday in Val Malvaglia, in the north of canton Ticino, during a wingsuit jump from a plane.
Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church numbers dropping in French-speaking Switzerland
This content was published on
As in German-speaking Switzerland, the number of members of the Reformed Church in French-speaking Switzerland is also declining.
Gotthard traffic queue hits 20km during holiday weekend
This content was published on
The traffic jam at the Gotthard north portal reached a length of 20 kilometres on the motorway between canton Nidwalden and canton Uri.
Swiss Interior Minister visits Cannes Film Festival
This content was published on
Swiss Interior Minister left the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday after three days of intensive dialogue, meetings and film screenings.
Swiss theatre director breaks with tradition at Vienna’s Rathausplatz
This content was published on
With the proclamation of the "Free Republic of Vienna", the start of the festival on Friday evening was unusually political.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Swiss Film Archive inaugurates research centre
This content was published on
The Swiss National Film Archives has inaugurated a modern new research and archive centre at Penthaz in western Switzerland.
This content was published on
The Solothurn Film Festival, credited with giving rise to a new generation of auteur cinema, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
This content was published on
Movie streaming services Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify have accumulated 6.5 million Swiss subscribers between them in Switzerland, having added 400,000 new customers last year.
This content was published on
Can a new cinematic adaptation of Jeremias Gotthelf’s 1842 novella The Black Spider help it break through internationally?
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.