Burning Memories
At the age of 16 Alice was a victim of abuse. 50 years later, this repressed experience unexpectedly makes its way back into her conscience. How is it possible to repress an incident for one’s entire life? How did it happen that she made films and wrote books always about children and violence? Alice walks with her accordion through the desert, searching for answers, looking at a phenomenon that affects many women in a similar or related way.
2021
Switzerland
80 mins
OV German – subtitles FR, EN, IT
Throughout her life Alice Schmid has dealt with the topics of children, violence and abuse. She has written books and made films without being aware that she herself was a victim of abuse in her youth. She not only repressed the event from her consciousness, but completely forgot it. Fifty years later, Alice happened to see the painting "Puberty" by Edvard Munch in Oslo with a naked girl, which suddenly reminded her of what had happened to her at the age of 16.
Alice fell silent after the abuse experience. She ended up with girls from the civil war in Congo in a Catholic boarding school for girls in Belgium. With them she started talking again and discovered her fascination for the black continent, where she later made several films.
The shock of memory is deep. Intuitively she travels to the desert of South Africa. She pursues the questions: Why could this happen to her and why did she remain silent? How does this form of forgetting or repression work? How is it that in all her films she pursues exactly these questions about abuse and violence without thinking about her own experience? Alice wants answers to these questions, goes back to her past and directs our attention to the phenomenon of silence and repression that affects many women and also men.
In this film Alice acts in front of the camera for the first time in her cinematic work. In doing so, she realizes why she has been making films about children and violence all these years. Why she has become the way she is, and why she is not afraid of violence, but frightened of closeness and love. A cinematic processing of the socially relevant themes of self-esteem, love and physical closeness, domestic violence, sexual abuse, repression, shame, fear and the place of children and girls then and now in our society. Her film is a personal search for traces of images, words and emotions in order to reconcile with her own experience and to open a door for women as well as men to a self-determined confrontation with their own abuse.
CREW
[TAB]Drehbuch, Regie und Akkordeon|Alice Schmid[/TAB]
[TAB]Editing|Anja Bombelli[/TAB]
[TAB]Editing Assistenz|Mirella Nüesch[/TAB]
[TAB]Kamera|Karin Slater, Aurelio Buchwalder, Kaleo Labelle[/TAB]
[TAB]Sounddesign|Guido Keller[/TAB]
[TAB]Ton|Reto Stamm, Patrick Becker, Nadine Häusler[/TAB]
[TAB]Color Grading, Compositing|Paul Avondet, peakfine[/TAB]
[TAB]Titel und Abspann|Sophia Murer, peakfine[/TAB]
[TAB]Mitarbeit Entwicklung|Rhea Plangg[/TAB]
[TAB]Buchhaltung|Corina Berchtold[/TAB]
[TAB]Revisionsstelle|Consultative Revisions AG[/TAB]
[TAB]Heiler im Film|Niall Campbell[/TAB]
[TAB]Stimme im Film|Ulrike Valentiner-Branth[/TAB]
[TAB]Sprechcoaching|Irina Schönen[/TAB]
Schüler- und Jugendchor Utopia
https://jugendchor-utopia.weebly.com/
Co-Produzent
SRF, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, Urs Augstburger
[TAB]Produktionelle Zusammenarbeit|Beauvoir Films, Adrian Blaser und Aline Schmid[/TAB]
[TAB]Dramaturg|Claude Muret[/TAB]
Distributer
OUTSIDE THE BOX
With the support of
BAK, Bundesamt für Kultur Sektion Film
Zürcher Filmstiftung
Kulturförderung Kanton Luzern
Suissimage
ISAN 0000-0004-B6C5-0000-8-0000-0000-D
SUISA Nr. 6610.333.79
2021
Switzerland
80 mins
OV German – subtitles FR, EN, IT
Throughout her life Alice Schmid has dealt with the topics of children, violence and abuse. She has written books and made films without being aware that she herself was a victim of abuse in her youth. She not only repressed the event from her consciousness, but completely forgot it. Fifty years later, Alice happened to see the painting "Puberty" by Edvard Munch in Oslo with a naked girl, which suddenly reminded her of what had happened to her at the age of 16.
Alice fell silent after the abuse experience. She ended up with girls from the civil war in Congo in a Catholic boarding school for girls in Belgium. With them she started talking again and discovered her fascination for the black continent, where she later made several films.
The shock of memory is deep. Intuitively she travels to the desert of South Africa. She pursues the questions: Why could this happen to her and why did she remain silent? How does this form of forgetting or repression work? How is it that in all her films she pursues exactly these questions about abuse and violence without thinking about her own experience? Alice wants answers to these questions, goes back to her past and directs our attention to the phenomenon of silence and repression that affects many women and also men.
In this film Alice acts in front of the camera for the first time in her cinematic work. In doing so, she realizes why she has been making films about children and violence all these years. Why she has become the way she is, and why she is not afraid of violence, but frightened of closeness and love. A cinematic processing of the socially relevant themes of self-esteem, love and physical closeness, domestic violence, sexual abuse, repression, shame, fear and the place of children and girls then and now in our society. Her film is a personal search for traces of images, words and emotions in order to reconcile with her own experience and to open a door for women as well as men to a self-determined confrontation with their own abuse.
CREW
[TAB]Drehbuch, Regie und Akkordeon|Alice Schmid[/TAB]
[TAB]Editing|Anja Bombelli[/TAB]
[TAB]Editing Assistenz|Mirella Nüesch[/TAB]
[TAB]Kamera|Karin Slater, Aurelio Buchwalder, Kaleo Labelle[/TAB]
[TAB]Sounddesign|Guido Keller[/TAB]
[TAB]Ton|Reto Stamm, Patrick Becker, Nadine Häusler[/TAB]
[TAB]Color Grading, Compositing|Paul Avondet, peakfine[/TAB]
[TAB]Titel und Abspann|Sophia Murer, peakfine[/TAB]
[TAB]Mitarbeit Entwicklung|Rhea Plangg[/TAB]
[TAB]Buchhaltung|Corina Berchtold[/TAB]
[TAB]Revisionsstelle|Consultative Revisions AG[/TAB]
[TAB]Heiler im Film|Niall Campbell[/TAB]
[TAB]Stimme im Film|Ulrike Valentiner-Branth[/TAB]
[TAB]Sprechcoaching|Irina Schönen[/TAB]
Schüler- und Jugendchor Utopia
https://jugendchor-utopia.weebly.com/
Co-Produzent
SRF, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, Urs Augstburger
[TAB]Produktionelle Zusammenarbeit|Beauvoir Films, Adrian Blaser und Aline Schmid[/TAB]
[TAB]Dramaturg|Claude Muret[/TAB]
Distributer
OUTSIDE THE BOX
With the support of
BAK, Bundesamt für Kultur Sektion Film
Zürcher Filmstiftung
Kulturförderung Kanton Luzern
Suissimage
ISAN 0000-0004-B6C5-0000-8-0000-0000-D
SUISA Nr. 6610.333.79
© Ciné A.S. GmbH, Alice Schmid