Rolf Lyssy

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Rolf Lyssy (2012)

Rolf Lyssy (born February 25, 1936 in Zurich ) is a Swiss film director and screenwriter . His most famous film is Die Schweizermacher . Together with Thomas Koerfer , Kurt Gloor , Fredi M. Murer , Markus Imhoof and Daniel Schmid , Rolf Lyssy is considered to be one of the co-founders of the “young” Swiss-German feature film .

life and work

Rolf Lyssy was born in 1936 into a simple, Jewish family in Zurich and spent his school and youth days in Herrliberg . Lyssy completed an apprenticeship as a photographer because there was still no training as a filmmaker in Switzerland and studying abroad was not possible for financial reasons. To get into film, he then worked as a lighting technician, camera assistant and production manager. From 1959 Lyssy worked for a year and a half on a television production team for the pharmaceutical company Ciba , which accompanied medical operations live. In 1961 he worked as a camera assistant for the Swiss feature film Demokrat Läppli , which confirmed that he wanted to make films himself. Lyssy took over the camera work for the unexpectedly successful documentary Ursula or the unworthy life (1966) by the documentary filmmakers Reni Mertens and Walter Marti . It was the two of them who produced his first full-length feature film Eugen is called Wohlgeboren (1968) - a comedy on the subject of marriage brokerage. His next work, the short film Vita Parcoeur (1972), was shown to a great audience at the Solothurn Film Festival . For the parody of the Vita Parcours and thus of public health, he won the 1973 jury award at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival . In addition to the ironic-satirical films, Lyssy also dealt with historical material.

Sensitized by his family history (his maternal grandparents had been deported by the Nazis to Minsk and murdered there), he dealt in detail with the assassination attempt by the Jewish medical student David Frankfurter on February 4, 1936 in Davos on the NSDAP regional group leader Wilhelm Gustloff . In 1974 there was published Konfrontation - the attack in Davos. Lyssy achieved the greatest box office success of the “young” German-Swiss feature film in 1978 with Die Schweizermacher. The film is a satire on the fearfulness of the Swiss authorities in the naturalization of foreigners, but at the same time on their submissive adaptability. He was unable to build on this success with cassette love and other films. In the German-speaking Swiss film scene, he remained unconsidered with many scripts and suggestions, but then wrote the autobiographical report Swiss Paradise, in which he dealt with his depressive illness , because of which Lyssy was admitted to the psychiatric university clinic in Zurich in 1998 for treatment .

Filmography

  • 1968: Eugen means well-born
  • 1972: Vita parcoeur (short film)
  • 1974: Confrontation - The attack in Davos (docudrama about David Frankfurter , his attack and Switzerland in World War II. Director and screenplay)
  • 1978: Die Schweizermacher (director and screenplay)
  • 1981: Cassette love
  • 1983: Teddy Bear
  • 1989: Leo Sonnyboy (director and screenplay)
  • 1992: A drummer in the desert
  • 1994: A clear case
  • 1999: Leo Sternbach - A Love for Chemistry (documentary about the chemist and pharmacist Leo Sternbach )
  • 2002: Writing against death (documentary about a Swiss woman who is pen pals with those sentenced to death in US prisons and who advocates the abolition of the death penalty)
  • 2004: Wäg vo de Gass (documentary about the controlled distribution of heroin)
  • 2006: Die Vitusmacher (documentary about the production of the film Vitus by Fredi M. Murer )
  • 2009: Hard (ys) Life - Glimpses into the life of an oral craftsman (documentary)
  • 2011: Ursula - Leben in Anderswo (documentary about the deaf-blind Ursula Bodmer, who was portrayed in 1966 in Ursula or the unworthy life , where Rolf Lyssy directed the camera)
  • 2017: The last punchline (feature film, among others with Monica Gubser )
  • 2020: Eden for everyone (comedy, among others with Heidi Diggelmann and Steffi Friis )

bibliography

literature

Film about Lyssy

  • Rolf Lyssy - The Filmmaker , SRF Reporter, February 19, 2017

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Lyssy: Swiss Paradise - An autobiographical report. Perlentaucher - Das Kulturmagazin, accessed on August 17, 2010 .
  2. ↑ a b https://www.srf.ch/sendung/reporter/rolf-lyssy-der-filmemacher
  3. ↑ Fischhof Prize. Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism (GRA), accessed on August 13, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Lyssy, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich