Alpine Fire

Born in 1940 in Beckenried by Lake Lucerne, at the age of 17 Fredi M. Murer moved to Zurich, where, from 1959, he studied technical drawing at the School of Design. After two years, he transferred to the specialist photography class run by Serge Stauffer (later founder of the independent arts school F+F) and Walter Binder (later curator of the Swiss Photography Foundation). In 1964 he was responsible for the design and realization of the large-scale slide projections in the “Schooling and Education” pavilion at the national EXPO 64 exhibition in Lausanne, also publishing the collection of photographs “Youth 13-20” and making the films Pacific, Chicory and Bernhard Luginbühl. Murer embarked on his career as a freelance film-maker in 1967. In 1970 he and his family went into “exile” in London for a year, where he served as a visiting lecturer at the Guildford Arts School. In 1971 he returned to Switzerland and shot We mountain people in the mountains. That same year, he founded the Nemo Film GmbH production company, together with Alexander J. Seiler, Georg Radanowicz, Kurt Gloor, Claude Champion, Yves Yersin, Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf and Ywan Schumacher. In 1975/76 he went to the USA for a study visit. Since 1995 Murer has lived and worked in Zurich. From 1992 to 1996, he was President of the Swiss Film-Makers Association. As an innovative and independent film-maker, Murer has made a major contribution to the renaissance of the Swiss cinema. Winner of the City of Zurich Arts Prize in 1995 and the Central Swiss Cultural Prize in 1997, in 2005 he was honoured by the Zurich Foundation for Western Ethics and Culture with a lifetime achievement award. This was the first time the prize had been conferred on a film-maker, the position of his work in the world of the Swiss cinema being described as “exemplary for the power of its message”. —http://www.swissfilms.ch