La Salamandre

Alain Tanner

Alain Tanner (born 6 December 1929 in Geneva) is a Swiss film director. Alain Tanner studied economics at the university of Geneva. In 1951, he joined the film club that Claude Goretta had just established at the university. After his college degree and a short time working for international shipping companies, he felt drawn to film. He found work at the British Film Institute in 1955, subtitling, translating, and organizing the archive. His first film, Nice Time, a short documentary about Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night, was made in 1957 with Claude Goretta. Produced by the British Film Institute Experimental Film Fund, it was first shown as part of the third Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in May 1957. The debut film won a prize at the film festival in Venice and much critical praise. Tanner went to France for a while where he assisted with several commercial films. There, he met some of the most important directors of the French New Wave in Paris as well as Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque Française. Some critics have found the influences of Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Bresson in his films[citation needed]. But the atmosphere in the film circles of Paris displeased him; he described it as « cutthroat. » Between 1960 and 1968, Tanner returned to Switzerland, and he made more than 40 films as well as documentaries in this time for French-language television there. in 1962, he became the co-founder of the Swiss young filmmakers’ « Groupe Cinque. » His first feature film, Charles, Dead or Alive (1969), won the first prize at the international film festival in Locarno. His next two films, La Salamandre (1971) and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), were made in close collaboration with the art critic and novelist John Berger, who had also worked with him, to a lesser degree and without a credit, on the writing of Charles. Influenced by his involvement with the British « Free Cinema » movement in London in the early 1960s and with the French New Wave during his years in Paris, Tanner is best known for his movies Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l’an 2000 (Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000), Dans la ville blanche (In the White City) and Messidor. [edit]