Clemens Klopfenstein

Clemens Klopfenstein (born October 19, 1944 in Täuffelen ) is a Swiss film director , screenwriter , cameraman , film producer and film editor .

Life

Klopfenstein made his first film experiments during middle school, which he graduated from in 1963. He then worked as a laboratory assistant, proofreader and journalist and studied at the Basel School of Applied Arts . From 1962 to 1965 he made a few short films and founded the AKS film working group with Urs Aebersold and Phillip Schaad. After his drawing teacher diploma, he was a student in the film class of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Zurich under Kurt Früh . His graduation film Nach Rio (1968) describes the escape of Swiss gangsters.

From 1968 to 1970 Klopfenstein was a cameraman for student films at the film schools in Zurich and Munich. Then he turned to painting and illustrated the novel The Manuscript of Saragossa by Jan Potocki . He continued his photographic work paese sera (night images) with film recordings, which ultimately led to the non-narrative compilation film Story of the Night . With The Call of Sibylla on a trip through the highlands of Italy, he approached the fictional realm. In Macau or the back of the sea , this world and the hereafter blur on a journey across continents. In The Forgotten Valley , a young Swiss man discovers an unknown valley with a group of refugees from the Second World War.

His film The Silence of Men , in which two alter egos talk about their existence on a world tour, won the Bern Film Prize in 1997 and the Swiss Film Prize in 1998. WerAangstWolf ( Who is afraid of the Umbrian wolf ) shows the bus journey of an increasingly insecure group of actors through the unreal landscape of Umbria .

Works

Films (selection)

• 1973: The manufacturers (book, camera)
• 1979: The story of the night (director, script, camera, editor)
• 1981: Traveling warrior (camera; TV)
• 1982: E nachtlang Füürland / "ein Nachtlang Feuerland" (direction, script, camera, editing)
• 1982: Transes - Rider on the Dead Horse (Production, Director)
• 1983: The Silesian Gate (Director)
• 1984: The Call of Sibylla (production, direction, script, camera)
• 1988: Macao or the Back of the Sea (director, script, camera)
• 1990: City Life (Director)
• 1991: The Forgotten Valley (Director, Book; TV)
• 1992: Füürland 2 (production, direction, script, camera, editing)
• 1994: The Gemmi - a transition (direction, book, camera)
• 1997: The Silence of Men (production, direction, script, camera, editing)
• 1999: Tatort: ​​Alp-Traum (TV series: director, screenplay)
• 2000: WerAngstWolf (direction, book, camera)
• 2001: Death of Mourning Trapani (with Ben Jeger )
• 2004: The Bird Sermon or The Screaming of the Monks (Director, Book, Camera)
• 2018: The Groan of the Ashes (director, script, camera)

Books

• The Migros blackmail. Detective novel (with Marcus P. Nester ). Zytglogge, Gümligen 1978; Rowohlt, Reinbek 1980, ISBN 3-499-42523-8 .
• The lightness of the pig . Novel. Spiegelberg, Zurich 2009.
  • New edition as: Pig and the bad end. Roman from Umbria. Spiegelberg, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-939043-29-4 .
• When I stole my films. Records. Spiegelberg, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-939043-25-6 .

Awards

• 1997: Bern Film Prize for The Silence of Men
• 1998: Swiss Film Prize for The Silence of Men

literature

• Christoph Egger. The film-making painter: for the 70th birthday of the director Clemens Klopfenstein. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, October 19, 2014
• Christoph Schneider. Bernese nights, Umbrian forests. Tages-Anzeiger, October 29, 2014
• Hans-Michael Bock (ed.): Encyclopedia of directors and cameramen from A-Z . Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-60651-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Clemens Klopfenstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Clemens Klopfenstein in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Homepage Clemens Klopfenstein
• Swiss Films portrait of Clemens Klopfenstein
• Clemens Klopfenstein in Swiss filmography (English)