Grandfather Never Saw the Sea / Dziadek nigdy nie widział morza

Running time: 27'
Christine Hürzeler, GER, SUI 2011, 27’

The film title’s claim, grandfather’s assumed deficiency, proves on inspection of his family archive of Super 8 and other film material as a bottomless pit for our curiosity and speculation. The wistful, melancholy collage succeeds in creating a mental mirror of epoch, idyll and trauma. Thus the individual unease becomes a shared unease, and the image of the family becomes the emotional sound of a thunderstorm. Memories are the only paradise from which we cannot be driven. But at the same time they are the only hell we are damned to, even if we are innocent.

Authors:

  • Christine Hürzeler

    Christine Hürzeler, born in Solothurn in 1967, lives and works in Zurich. Studies in geography, sociology and ethnology at the Universities of Fribourg and Zurich. Collaboration on a range of research projects in the field of urban sociology (University of Melbourne, Humboldt University, Berlin). From 2001 onwards diverse film-related training courses, including documentary film-making and film studies (University of the Arts Bern, University of Zurich). Since 2001 collaboration on a variety of cinema documentaries in research capacities and as Assistant Director.

    Feierabend (2004)
    Morgenrot (2002)

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Screenings: