Immersive 360° XR film by Juerg Neuenschwander

Remnants immerses viewers in a personal, panoramic experience of our relationship with nature. Shots of magnificent but damaged landscapes are superimposed with dancers using their bodies to express the decline that surrounds them. What remains here is still beautiful, but the land is dry and inhospitable.

We are on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, some 4,300 metres above sea level and surrounded by majestic mountains. The area is also known as the Third Pole for the enormous water reserves stored in its snow and glaciers. It is the source of major rivers such as the Yellow River and Yangtze. But this region, on which so much depends, is at risk. Climate change is melting the ice fields, extreme weather is causing droughts, and livestock are damaging the soil. As the glaciers shrink, there is less and less water to feed the huge rivers and those whose livelihoods depend on them. Water for irrigation, industry and drinking is dwindling, and the rivers are struggling to reach the sea.

These are the facts. Remnants acknowledges them, but goes further, exploring how they affect our feelings, thoughts and behaviours. By bringing different disciplines together, Remnants highlights the interdependencies that keep the earth – and us – alive.

Premiered and exhibited at the Aroundspace Gallery, Shanghai

Remnants was made possible with the support of:
College of Arts and Media at Tongji University, Shanghai and Studio MF Vision, Shanghai

The Chinese Recipe: Bold and Smart takes viewers across China and introduces them to one-of-a-kind enthusiasts and successful entrepreneurs whose curiosity, ambition and sense for innovation shape the way they live and work. Neuenschwander, who spent many years living in Shanghai, draws on his extensive knowledge of this enigmatic country to deliver a thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of a little-known Chinese reality.

“An entertaining road movie through a world of winning artfulness in a rapidly changing country.” Geri Krebs, WOZ

95 min / 5.1/stereo, DCP, 2-DVD Edition NTSC and PAL
Subtitles: English/Mandarin, German/French
 
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Kathia, Phillippe, Marcello, and Christian are all dealing with mental health problems. But despite facing marginalization and spending long periods in the hospital, they are on their way to taking back control of their lives – whether by starting their own business, finding a new job, enrolling in a further training scheme, or simply seeking happiness with a new love in the home they have bought together. Yet alongside all the optimism, there is pain in the knowledge that nothing will be as it was before the breakdown, that they will have to accept a loss of professional, financial, or social status. “They just downgraded my position, made my work more menial. It was like: Get him away from the counter and we’re done.” (Philipp Zürcher)

72 min, 5.1/stereo, DCP and DVD
Subtitles: German, French, English
 
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Juerg Neuenschwander is travelling through Burkina Faso and Mali with the three Swiss protagonists of his film “Encounters on the Milky Way”. We see them at the Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou during the premiere, in between open-air screenings driving through spectacular landscapes on washed-out dirt paths. The highlights of the trip are the screening in the remote village of Baraboulé for Amadou Dicko, influential Chef de Canton, and the audience on the following day for “Les Amis d’Amadou”.

52 Min, Stereo, color, DVD
Subtitles: German, French, English
 
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Extraordinary visual experiences and surprising connections create a mosaic that encompasses Switzerland and the Sahel. Continually shifting perspectives, self-evident links between cows and milk, market and progress, are set in motion. The focus is on encounters with and experiences of cattle breeders and dairy farmers in Burkina Faso, Mali and Switzerland who face the challenges of the modern world with tenacity and imagination.

94 Min, 5.1/Stereo, color, 35mm/DVD
Subtitles: German, French, English

 
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sooner or later captures ordinary acts, which in the face of death become a ritual, and gives space to the subtle, nearly invisible gestures and movements, which make the suffering and insecurities more bearable: Caressing a cat, a handshake or a fleeting glance; pictures and moments in death and grief, which we avoid in every day life, feeling insecure, fearful or ashamed. sooner or later tells about the universality of the only certitude in human life. Whether in the Emmental or in Tibet, whether at home or in a hospital, the final farewell to persons and to life is a difficult and painful experience everywhere. But there is no escape from one‘s own transience anywhere.

The film about evanescence, dying, death and grief, despair, anger, pain, helplessness, release and calm.

90 Min, 5.1/stereo, color, 35mm/DCP/Bluray/DVD
Subtitles: German, French, English

 
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What by some of us, looking back, is felt as an irreplaceable loss, is still continuing here in full swing. The swirl of civilisation set in motion by the Chinese has transformed the traditional way of life into a confused tangle of different epochs and values. By chance I caught a thread that led me into the center of this tangle: it is the trail of medicine, the net of public medical care, which is interlaced by two totally different patterns. On the one hand the partially displaced Tibetan monastery medicine and on the other hand the newly introduced Chinese system of barefoot doctors and hospitals on the basis of Western medicine. The cultural revolution signified a catastrophic cut into the tradition of the old Tibetan medicine. It is only with liberalisation in the early 80s that traditional medicine has been recognised again by the state. How does this coexistence express itself daily?

93 Min, mono, color, 16mm/DVD
Subtitles: german, french, english
 
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Just as in rural areas all over the world, popular medicine played an important role in the Emmental of Switzerland until about a hundred years ago. Herbs and roots, the laying-on of hands, the pendulum and charms were used to care for the sick and injured. Alternative medical skills and practices were widespread.

Director Jürg Neuenschwander first discovered the magic of healing in Tibet where he made his film Shigatse – one injection asks for more. In the Far East he was reminded of his own Emmental childhood full of moments without rational explanation. To the sound track of music by the European Chaos String Quintet, The Power of Healing presents healers and their patients. The fi lm appeals for a perception of a world in which the inexplicable is allowed to exist and be trusted.

93 Min, Stereo, color, 35mm/DVD
Subtitles: German, English and French
 
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The Rasheda Trust shows the ups and downs of the Bangladeshi entrepreneur Rasheda Begum, who rose from nothing and holds her ground in a male dominated world. Back in the eighties, Rasheda‘s family lived in extreme poverty. The only cash income came from Rasheda‘s husband Ali, who worked for a pittance as a labourer. When government officials came to the village and offered the first micro credits, Rasheda saw her chance. A success story, filmed in Bangladesh between 1993 and 2005, surprising and entertaining.

52 min, stereo, color, Video 16:9/DVD
Subtitles: german, french, english
 
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“Every day, I think about my family, my children, and the future.” Two years ago, Magheswaran Naganathy fled Sri Lanka. Along with Ratha Sivaramalingam, Puniya Sundarampillai, and about 50 other Tamils, he now lives in a refugee camp run by the Salvation Army in Zollikofen, close to Bern in Switzerland. The residents all find ways to kill time in the camp: Shopping in Shoppyland if their social allowance will stretch to it (they aren’t allowed to get a normal job); role playing to prepare for the much-feared prospect of police questioning; picking out summer clothes at the Red Cross; waiting for the mail carrier to arrive with letters and newspapers from Sri Lanka. “My children always ask me what living in Switzerland is like, and when I’m coming home.”

90 Min, Stereo, color, 16mm/DVD
Subtitles: Deutsch, Französisch, Englisch
 
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