Movies by Erich Schmid
Max Bill: The Master's Vision
The film about Max Bill (1908-1994) moves between the dynamic fields of art, aesthetics and politics. Max Bill was probably the most important swiss artist of the 20th century and the most famous student to come out of the legendary Bauhaus in Dessau. He was an ardent anti-fascist and all his avant-garde work as an artist, sculptor, architect and typographer showed a social responsibility and environmental awareness right through his life. His views have become incredibly topical.
Meier 19
The policemen's wages were stolen from the Zurich police headquarters. Police inspector Meier 19 discovered that the head of the crime squad which was leading the investigation of the case gave a fake alibi. But instead of investigating the false alibi inspector Meier 19 was imprisoned, his wife demanded the divorce and his friends abandoned him. But the revolutionary youth movement of 1968 supported Meier 19 who became a symbol of the battle against the established order and corruption while his life fell apart like in a classical tragedy.
Staatenlos - Klaus Rózsa, Fotograf
Klaus Rozsa, a well-known and politically active photographer, lived in Zurich for decades as a stateless individual. All of his applications for naturalisation were refused on political grounds. In 1956 he fled Hungary, growing up in Switzerland with a Jewish father who had survived Auschwitz and Dachau. Due to the extreme proximity of such a fate, the camera led him repeatedly to places where injustice was done. It was this particular quality of his camerawork that proved fateful for him.
He Called Himself Surava
Hans Werner hirsch aka Surava was a journalist. He wrote about the deportation of French jews, and the Swiss government chased him because the Swiss government was Nazi-friendly. The Swiss intelligence service (Bundespolizei) knew him as a "communist jew". In fact, he worked for a left newspaper, but he wasn't a jew. Surava took his courage to write about the "censored" inhumanity in Europe.