Films by Thomas Keller

Switzerland, Germany 2024, 89 min
by Heidi Specogna

Claudia Andujar escaped the Holocaust as a child and became a multiple award-winning photographer. She travelled the Amazon since the 1960s, and developed a profound relationship with the Yanomami people. From Claudia, they learned to fight against the exploitation of the rainforest and their extermination. Former victims are now activists.

2023, 90 min
by Jan Schmidt-Garré

Balkrishna Doshi is one of India's most influential 20th century architects and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Doshi and his practice Vastu-Shilpa has a portfolio spanning over 70 years, including collaborations with both Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. The film introduces viewers to his famous buildings and offers an exclusive look into his work process. Doshi shares his sources of inspiration and motivation and is also a brilliant storyteller. His presence of mind, his humor and his wisdom create the image of a man from whom we can not only learn to build humanly, but from whom we can learn – to be human.

2023, 118 min
by Regina Schilling

At 34, Igor Levit is an exceptional artist in the world of classical music. A young rebel, who - at the piano - transforms into a mature musician. At age nine he arrived in Germany, a Jewish immigrant of Russian descent. Having an opinion and publicly expressing it, is not a choice, it is a survival strategy. The film follows the artist over two years as Levit explores his “life after Beethoven“, as he searches for his next challenge, his identity as an artist. We observe him recording new pieces, his intense immersion into the music, his collaborations with conductors, orchestras and recording artists, his warm embrace of the audiences. And then Covid hits. Having booked 180 concerts all over the world, just to see them being cancelled, Levit is among the first to adapt, establishing a musical lifeline between him and his community on Instagram and twitter. And by doing so he discovers a new freedom, away from the constraints of touring, publishing and marketing.Over the course of two years the film accompanies the artist while he navigates between a traditional career in the classics, his need for activism and an uncertain path as a musician who connects and inspires. [GFQ 4 2022]

Germany 2020, 104 min
by Jeanine Meerapfel

A WOMAN is a cinematic essay, a deeply personal look into the past of a woman. The story of Marie Louise Chatelaine, the director's mother, is the starting point, but several stories are added and told in parallel, in a fragmented reflection of yesterday and today. A family history that makes contemporary history recognizable, a deep search into the wounds of exile and a reflection on the function of memory. The images that follow the stations of this woman's life flow like a stream of consciousness: Chalon-sur-Saone, Strasbourg, Untergrombach, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires. What does it mean for a person to feel foreign? Being a foreigner in the country, in life, in language... particularly estranged as a woman.

Germany 2018, 105 min
by Hans-Erich Viet

Road movie with the 98 year old holocaust survivor Leon Schwarzbaum to the places of home and horror. Schwarzbaum, born in Hamburg 1921 travels with us to places of birth and childhood, to Bedzin/Poland and many times to Auschwitz, where all of his family where murdered.We acompany him to the last SS trial in Detmold where former SS officer Reinhold Hanning (95) was sentenced to 5 years in prison. We acompany Leon Schwarzbaum to a German talkshow, visit a prison as well as school classes, where he tells his story. In the end he sings – as he did with his Polish/Jewish friends in the thirties, in Bedcin. A documentary film with one of the last survivors, tragic stories but also humorous, because of the personality of Mr Schwarzbaum the film honours a man who witnessed the greatest horror of all times.

Germany 2012, 100 min
by Jan Schmidt-Garré

Modern yoga, that is, the form practised daily by tens of millions of people around the world, goes back directly to the god Shiva according to Indian tradition. At the same time, however, modern yoga originated in the early twentieth century, a creation of Indian savant T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989). That story is far less known and what this film is all about. Krishnamacharya’s life and teachings are seen through the eyes of the director Jan Schmidt-Garre on his search for authentic yoga. His journey leads him from the legendary students and relatives of Krishnamacharya’s to the source of modern yoga, at the palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. From Pattabhi Jois Jan learns the “Sun salutation”, from Iyengar the “King of Asanas”, the headstand, and finally Sribhashyam reveals him his father’s secret “Life Saving Yoga Session”. A feature-length documentary including rare historical footage as well as lavish reenactments.

Switzerland, Germany 2011, 91 min
by Heidi Specogna

They don’t wear uniforms or carry weapons. They have no bodyguards. They are equipped with laptops, cameras and sound recorders. They work along dusty roads and in overcrowded refugee camps. They listen to hundreds of testimonies of rape, murder and torture; so gruesome they themselves sometimes come close to breaking point. Despite impossible working conditions, they collect the evidence for indictments against those who ordered some of the most serious crimes of our time - committed in Darfur, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic - they are the investigators of the International Criminal Court. The film accompanies the investigators in their search for the truth, a quest, demanding their utmost strength and commitment. They are the real heroes of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Germany, France 2010, 54 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus

Every two years, the small town of Beverungen, in the middle of Germany, celebrates with particular vigour its traditional Marksmen's Festival. Festivities are focused on numerous parades with marchers in uniform and a shooting contest, where the winner is declared "King". Throughout the Germanic regions, marksmen's guilds are known since the 10th century. They protected cities and rural areas against troubles, wars and looting. In Beverungen, about a quarter of the active male population is involved in the local marksmen's association. In 2008, Beverungen has the honour of hosting the annual festival of the “Confederation of Historical German Marksmen's Brotherhoods“ with thousands of participants coming from all over the west of Germany. District Kings and Diocesan Majesties compete for the title of the year's new "Confederal King" who receives the royal insignia in front of the altar, after the prayer of blessing...

France, Germany 2006, 86 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus, Hubert Ferry

When France surrendered in 1940 and German soldiers showed up in the small village of Housseras (Vosges, Région Grand Est, Northeast of France), an unknown French infantryman burned his papers and killed himself in a farmer's barn. Four years later he was identified as "soldat Doblin, Vincent". In fact, he was none other than the mathematician Wolfgang Doeblin, son of the famous German novelist Alfred Döblin ("Berlin Alexanderplatz") who was forced to flee Germany with his family in 1933 because of his resolutely anti-Nazi positions and Jewish descent.A French citizen since October 1936, Wolfgang Doeblin carried on his research in Probability Theory during his military service and even during the hardships of the "Phoney War" in the winter of 1939-40. In February 1940, four months before his death at the age of 25, he sent his most important manuscripts ("About Kolmogorov's Equation") in a sealed envelope to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, where they were kept in safe custody for 60 years.Wolfgang Doeblin's short and dramatic life story, almost forgotten, was finally brought into the limelight when the sealed envelope was opened in May 2000. Far ahead of their time, his groundbreaking contributions to the theory of random processes place Wolfgang Doeblin among the major innovators of probability, the "mathematics of randomness". Mathematical models for evaluation of chances and risks went on to gain major importance in vast domains of modern science, in everyday life and especially in the contemporary financial mathematics and its numerous applications in capitalist economies.