Curt Truninger

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Curt Truninger and actress Eva Birthistle on the set of The Rendezvous in Toronto. Photo by Peter Rehak.

Curt Truninger (born April 12, 1957 in Lucerne ) is a Swiss film director, screenwriter and producer. He is also a painter, journalist and occasionally works as an actor.

Curt Truninger is a member of the European Film Academy (EFA) . He lives in Toronto and Zurich.

life and work

youth

Curt Truninger grew up in Lucerne. His father Ernst was a banker and travel agency entrepreneur. The grandfather was a well-known innkeeper and popular politician of the Grütliverein .

Curt Truninger was enthusiastic about the cinema from an early age, especially about French films - from Truffaut , Godard , Eric Rohmer to André Cayatte . As a teenager, he was introduced to Allan Porter , the American editor-in-chief of the world's leading photo magazine camera . Porter introduced Truninger to the world of photography and the related arts. Famous artists and cultural workers visited Porter in Lucerne and the young Truninger met many of them; from photographers like Will McBride , Sven Simon (alias Axel Springer junior) or Oliviero Toscani to Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner . Lucerne was a creative hub for international art movements in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Truninger was also an avid athlete. He played in one of the best U-16 teams in Switzerland, FC Luzern . Many of his teammates later became national players. He was also active as an artistic gymnast, swimmer and ski racer. As a student he took part in international university ski races.

education

Curt Truninger studied social sciences and art history in Munich and in Aberdeen, Scotland . He received his PhD from Aberdeen University , where he also taught. Sporting highlight of his university days: winning a bronze medal at the British university championships in alpine skiing. He was also awarded a Blue (University Sport), the highest award in university sport in Anglo-Saxon countries, and is entitled to wear a corresponding blue blazer . A serious sports accident resulted in his being fully focused on an academic and creative career.

Truninger was a member of the Chatham House think tank in London (formerly known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and a UNICEF Ambassador.

Even during his university days, Curt Truninger worked regularly as a journalist, film and art critic and photographer for German-language media - from the Zürcher Tagesanzeiger to the German star and penthouse . He also played smaller roles in various feature films that took him to filming locations from Rome to Pakistan.

watch TV

He later worked for the cultural department of Swiss television . He realized films for the cultural program 'Schauplatz' and presented the film program 'Neu im Kino'.

Back in Munich at the end of the 80s, he realized magazine articles for the foreign editorial team of Bayerischer Rundfunk ( ARD ) a. a. for the show Weltspiegel . Then the well-known German cultural journalist and presenter Reinhart Hoffmeister of the ZDF cultural department aspekte in Mainz recommended him . In addition to regular contributions to aspects - with a focus on the fine arts - Truninger made numerous documentaries for ZDF. He was also one of the hosts of the talk show “Encounters” by 3sat / ZDF, for which he interviewed cultural workers, such as Porsche designer Jan Matthias, architect Mario Botta or Heidi Weber , the promoter of Le Corbusier's artistic creation and owner of the Center Le Corbusier in Zurich. Truninger did one of the last interviews with Richard Burton while filming the TV series Wagner - The Life and Work of Richard Wagner , where the star, who was to die shortly after, spoke unusually frankly.

After meeting the legendary photographer Richard Avedon in New York, Truninger was commissioned by Avedon to make a documentary about him. The two became friends, and Avedon hired Curt Truninger to moderate his exhibitions several times.

cinemamovies

Waiting for Michelangelo

In 1996 Curt Truninger made his first English-language feature film. Waiting for Michelangelo is about four friends who are more fortunate in life than in love. The main location for the comedy was Toronto , and Curt's hometown Lucerne . The Canadian cult star Roy Dupuis ( Nikita ) plays the leading role. At the film festival in Alexandria, Egypt, the Egyptian director legend and jury member Youssef Chahin described Truninger's debut as a “successful American Eric Rohmer”. Channel 4 (London) was able to sell Waiting for Michelangelo in around 30 countries. Truninger wrote the English-language screenplay with his producer and partner Margrit Ritzmann, who was then a psychotherapist.

Dead by Monday - It 's better to die together

In 2001 Truninger / Ritzmann shot again in Toronto and at the Niagara Falls . The black comedy Dead by Monday is about love and suicide. Julie, played by the Englishwoman Helen Baxendale , known as Emily in the US cult series Friends and star of the UK series Cold Feet, wants to kill herself. The depressed writer Alex ( Tim Dutton ), known from The Bourne Identity and the TV series Ally McBeal , saves her. The two sign a suicide pact and go looking for a suitable place of death. The Italian-German-Canadian co-production had its world premiere as 'Weekend da Suicidio' in Florence . The Berlin production company 'Road Movies' founded by Wim Wenders is the German co-producer . The film has been invited to film festivals from Shanghai , Portland , Valencia to Haugesund and Monaco, and has won numerous prizes. Dead By Monday was screened on Sky Italia in their 'Kultfilm' series.

The rendezvous

In 2008, Truninger and co-author Margrit Ritzmann adapted a play by the New York author and actor Tom Noonan . The drama The Rendezvous with Irish Eva Birthistle ( Just a Kiss by Ken Loach , Nightwatching - The Rembrandt Plot by Peter Greenaway ) - and again with Tim Dutton , revolves around two lonely singles who cannot find each other. The tragic-comic drama focuses on an evening in a loft - a chamber play as a rollercoaster. The claustrophobic, argumentative atmosphere has been compared by critics to Roman Polanski's The God of Carnage (original title Carnage ). The world premiere took place at the Zurich Film Festival 2010. In the US, the drama made its debut at the Film Festival in Myrtle Beach , South Carolina. Two prizes at the festival there unexpectedly opened a US theatrical release for the independent film.

Curt Truninger and Margrit Ritzmann are currently working on a new romantic comedy and a political docudrama. Curt Truninger occasionally does commercials and teaches film in Toronto.

Awards

Dead by Monday - It 's better to die together

The rendezvous

  • 2012: Myrtle Beach International Film Festival - Best Drama and Best Actress

Filmography (as a director)

cinemamovies

Full evening documentaries (selection)

  • 1984 Dialect Rock (SF)
  • 1986 Engadin: A paradise is changing (ZDF)
  • 1987 The Ticino of the Ticino (ZDF)
  • 1988 nostalgia on celluloid (ZDF)
  • 1989 Risorgimento der Phantasie (ZDF, co-director)
  • 1989 Cannons for the Easter Snow (ZDF)
  • 1990 History of Semmering (ZDF)
  • 1990 The sofa in the park (SF)
  • 1991 Avedon - Kunsthaus Zürich (producer: Richard Avedon)
  • 1992 Uluruh (longform music video)
  • 1993 Chaos on the Matterhorn (ZDF / 3sat)
  • 1994 Dimitris Atelier (mini series SF)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le Corbusier's universe - Heidi Weber interviewed by Curt Truninger, 3sat 1987, video on YouTube, 30 min.
personal data
SURNAME Truninger, Curt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss film director, screenwriter and producer
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne