PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: Vanishing of culture…extinction of nature

Filmmaker: Andreas Moser (Director & Writer) 

Experts: Heinrich Haller (former director of the Swiss National Park)

            Silva Semadeni (former member of the National Council of Switzerland and former President of Pro Natura)

Moderator: Isabella Sedivy (Plan Biodivers)

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STORY

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Swiss National Park in 2014, the SRF broadcast series NETZ NATUR produced a documentary that tells the story of wildlife in the unique Swiss National Park from unusual perspectives. At the beginning, the documentary looks back millions of years, and tells the story of this impressive mountain landscape and its inhabitants. They answer questions on how it has been changed by humans over the past centuries, and how it finally achieved complete nature protection status in 1914 as the first National Park in Europe. Highlights include close-ups of completely undisturbed wildlife in their most private moments, recorded by dozens of hidden automatic wildlife cameras in the entire park area

PODIUM DISCUSSION

BERN: Ecology and society

Filmmaker: Marion Neumann (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Alison Pouliot (Environmental Photographer and Natural Historian) 

Moderator: Nimal Bourloud (Student Social Anthropology) 

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STORY

The film takes 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?  

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: Historical extinction and social changes

Filmmaker: Thomas Imbach (Director & Writer)

Expert: Christian Schmid (ETH Zurich)

Moderator: Manuela Wenger

BERN: Historical extinction and social changes

Filmmaker: Thomas Imbach (Director and Writer) 

Experts: Britta Hentschel (architectural history) 

            Simone Marti (Lecturer and member of Migrant Solidarity   Network)

Moderator: Susan Thieme (Geographer) 

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STORY

The film explores the destruction of a unique train station in Zurich and the construction of the new prison and police centre in its place. From the perspective of the filmmaker's window, and with testimony from prisoners awaiting deportation, the film probes how we deal with the extinction of history and its replacement with total security.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: People in the centre of design or ‘design for the sake of design’

Filmmaker: Virpi  Suutari (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Patrick Thurston (President Architektenverbands BSA)

Moderator: Henriette Bornkamm (SRF)

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STORY

This captivating exploration of Alvar Aalto, the defining figure in Scandic design and one of Europe's greatest modern architects, focuses on his remarkable and loving partnership with wife, Aino. Theirs was a profoundly humanist vision that put people at the centre of design, and ranged from work in furniture design through to huge architectural projects. They mixed with, and influenced, major figures of modernist art and design including Le Corbusier, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Come on a cinematic tour of their iconic buildings all over the world, from a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector's private house near Paris, to a pavilion in Venice. Narrated by experts in the field and featuring never before seen archive footage, Aalto tells the love story of an extraordinary couple with a great passion for human scale architecture.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: The collision between human and nature

Filmmaker: Robin Petré (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Janet Hering (Director EAWAG)

Moderator: Cornelia Krug (University of Zurich) 

BERN: The collision between human and nature

Filmmaker: Robin Petré (Director and Writer) 

Expert: tba

Moderator: Payal Parekh (Climate Scientist and Activist)

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STORY

“When the glacial terminus broke, it marked the beginning of one of many waves.”
Storms unleash along Europe’s coastlines, taking their toll. Volunteers are preparing for winter. Injured seal pups are nurtured with liquid food and warmed with infra-red lamps. Oil-soiled swans are subjected to foam baths. One stares into the eye of a giant stranded whale. And the whale looks back. In poetic images, Robin Petré traces the gaze between humans and wild animals, narrates the close interweaving of habitats and closes the cycle from perpetrator to helper. Laying bare the ambivalent relationship between society and threatened eco-systems, the haunting imagery patiently and respectfully opens a space for deep reflection. A relentless gaze into the abyss of the Anthropocene.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH & BERN: AI and our liberties

Filmmaker: Shalini Kantayya (Director and Writer) (Zoom)

Expert: Agata Ferretti (ETH Zurich)

Moderator: Fupa Magic (Educator, multidisciplinary artist and facilitator) 

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STORY

Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, AI is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.

Director Shalini Kantayya illuminates our mass misconceptions about AI and emphasizes the urgent need for legislative protection. From facial scanning used for policing and surveillance to automated HR systems that mirror and magnify workplace prejudices, these technologies are created with fundamentally biased building blocks. 

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: Neuroscience, psychology and the politics of fear

Filmmaker: Miriam von Arx (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Lutz Jäncke (University of Zurich)

Moderator: Christoph Kueffer (ETH Zurich)

BERN: Neuroscience, psychology and the politics of fear

Filmmaker: Miriam von Arx (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Eveline Frischknecht (Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy,   University of Bern)

           Lutz Jäncke (University of Zurich)

Moderator: Surangika Jayarathne (Social and Cultural Geographer)

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STORY

The Scent of Fear is a journey around the globe, on which we meet people who freeze with fear, people who are looking for it, people who find it, and people who love it. There is this woman who sets out for the Arctic all alone. There are the radical society-wearies who set up their homes in bunkers, there is the fearful young Korean who learns in a seminar how to die happily. On the way we meet experts from neuroscience, psychology and politics who show us how our society is controlled by messages of fear. The Scent of Fear is an exciting and clever analysis of the universal question of why people are afraid of fear.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: The diseases that we do not see

Filmmaker: Dea Gjinovci (Director and Writer) (Zoom)

Expert: Naser Morina (University of Zurich)

Moderator: Caroline Wiedmer (Franklin University)

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BERN: The diseases that we do not see

Filmmaker: Dea Gjingovci (Director and Writer) 

Expert: Kemal Sadulov (Radio journalist and president of Romano    Dialog)

Moderator: Alexander Vorbrugg (Geographer)

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STORY

A 10-year-old Roma boy living in Sweden attempts to come to terms with the mysterious Resignation syndrome that has put his two sisters in a coma. The tight-knit family is trying to rebuild a normal life far from their native Kosovo where they were victims of persecution. While their entire future hangs in the balance of a pending asylum request, the little boy dreams of building a spaceship to leave it all behind.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

BERN: Migration and (in)visibility

Amel Alzakout (Director & Writer)

Moderator: Tba.

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STORY

With Purple Sea, Syrian artist Amel Alzakout documents her experiences of 28 October 2015, based on the same material as in the reconstruction of Forensic Architecture, but in a more immediate way. An event that has been repeated countless times at Europe's borders since then. An overcrowded boat on its way from Turkey to Greece that is shipwrecked. One of the survivors, the artist Amel Alzakout, recorded the ship's sinking with a waterproof camera she wore on her wrist. The disturbing footage meets the voice of the director as she tries to escape to another safe place, the past or a possible future.


STORY

Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, consisting of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalist, software developers, scientists, lawyers, and an extended network of collaborators from a wide range of fields and disciplines. Founded in 2010 Forensic Architecture is committed to the development and dissemination of new evidentiary techniques and undertakes advanced architectural and media investigations on cases of state and corporate violence on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights and civil society groups, as well as political and environmental justice organizations. Forensic Architecture produces and presents architectural evidence in a variety of forums: national and international courts, parliamentary inquiries, peoples’ tribunals, as well as in the media and in cultural spaces. 

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: The Covid crisis: Politicians, scientists and us

Filmmaker: Suzanne Hillinger (Director and Producer) (Zoom)

Expert: Christian Althaus (University of Bern)

Moderator: Marcus Hall (University of Zurich)

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STORY

Filmed in secret over five months, Totally Under Control uses news footage and interviews with experts and government whistleblowers to show how the administration missed each opportunity to either stop the virus from arriving in the U.S. or prevent its spread. The filmmakers present these events in rapid, blow-by-blow succession, lending the documentary an urgency that contrasts with the languid federal response to the pandemic. The result is a film that feels shocking to watch in retrospect for its crisp frankness. Viewers may have grown numb to the constant churn of distressing news and learned to stomach the administration’s failure to contain the virus. But Totally Under Control refuses to look away, and being reminded of how many warnings went unheeded is unnerving.

PODIUM DISCUSSION

ZURICH: How do we save the planet?

Filmmakers: Karl Ammann & Laurin Merz 

Expert: Severin Dressen (Director Zoo Zurich)

Moderator: Simone Bucher van Ligten (ETH Zurich)

BERN: How do we save the planet?

Filmmakers: Karl Ammann & Laurin Merz

Expert: Bruno Mainini (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Switzerland)

Moderator: tba

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STORY

The magnificent tiger is one of the world’s most beloved, and threatened creatures. Filmmaker, Karl Ammann uncovers their illegal breeding in secret South East Asian tiger farms. His nine-year investigation exposes how body parts are harvested from both live and butchered tigers, and then traded for sale in China’s underground pharmaceutical and jewellery industries.

Year after year, Karl has gone to warlord and triad-controlled regions of Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam to learn how the tigers are traded. He has been able to achieve what Interpol and other anti- trafficking organizations have failed to do, infiltrating top trafficking syndicates and gaining access to major crime hubs and underworlds. Karl has unveiled a number of disturbing findings. He himself is an unlikely hero in this story; a middle-aged man who lives humbly with his wife in Kenya.