To celebrate Climage's 40th anniversary, short, medium and feature-length films will be screened at the Capitole, along with a musical evening featuring giant karaoke.

Climage: a collective adventureClimage was born in the bubbling crucible of creative video in the 1980s, and found its balance and recognition in the production of documentaries for television and cinema. Some of these films made their mark on the Swiss cinematic landscape, enjoying great critical and popular success. Yet Climage was originally a collective of artists who wanted to explore the potential of video to create singular, personal, political and slightly madcap works. Switzerland had been home to a number of filmmaking groups since the Nouvelle Vague, notably Groupe 5, but with the accessibility offered by video, even lighter than 16mm, a new generation of filmmakers emerged, claiming to be above all "artisans".1985, Yves Kropf and Alex Mayenfisch founded the Climage collective. The New York and French production models were a source of inspiration for the creation and distribution of audiovisual content. Also drawing their influences from experimental video, Kropf and Mayenfisch, joined by Antoine Jaccoud, give birth to their first creation: Primeurs, a series of poetic-humorous sketches. "We simply had to do something, try something out, work together and help each other," says Alex Mayenfisch, who was soon joined by Fernand Melgar, himself active in Lausanne's video scene. Together, they continued to produce these video vignettes, which were soon broadcast by Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR). The latter granted the collective a small budget for a series of clips, which led to several other short films. The team was completed in 1993 by Stéphane Goël, who had trained in editing and directing in New York. While Jaccoud turned to writing, Goël, Mayenfisch and Melgar turned to documentaries in collaboration with TSR, which became an essential partner in their work. At the same time, Swiss documentary filmmaking is enjoying genuine international recognition, to which the association's works contribute. Marked by a social and historical conscience, Climage members are keen to include the diverse realities of Switzerland in their work. Migration, social and workers' struggles, the transformation of the rural world and feminist struggles are at the heart of the collective's films. They explore utopias and denounce injustice, always seeking to appeal to the widest possible audience. In 2003, Daniel Wyss joined the collective, sharing its values and working methods. The commercial release in cinemas of Fernand Melgar's Exit in 2005 marked a turning point, as the figure of the director, of the author, came to the fore, responding to the demands of the increasingly professional film industry. With its origins in television and video, the collective, which had initially opposed the cinematographic filiation claimed by Groupe 5, was weakened and had to reinvent itself to survive. The year 2018 is marked by the departure of Melgar (whose films are no longer included in Climage's catalog) due to a difference of opinion with members of the collective; but this period is also marked by the arrival of new figures. 2018 saw the release of Les Dames by Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, who had approached the collective: this was the first time Climage had produced a work by outsiders. The arrival of Céline Pernet, an ethnologist by training, in 2013 and her approach with her first feature film Garçonnières, is precisely in line with this perspective. In 2020, Pascaline Sordet joined the association, producing Maman danse. From the follies of youth to mid-life crisis, from craftsmanship to auteurization, Climage maintains an uncompromising faith in the sharing of knowledge and know-how. "The important thing is to make good films and... come what may!" as Stéphane Goël puts it.The films in the retrospectiveThis selection of documentaries made within Climage tackles important societal themes such as the industrial tribunal (by Stéphane Goël), the closure of the Iril firm in Renens with L'Usine (by Alex Mayenfisch), farming in crisis in Campagne perdue (by Stéphane Goël), women's celibacy and relationships with men in Les Dames (Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond) and Garconnières (Céline Pernet), and Switzerland's role in the Second World War in Atterrissage forcé (Daniel Wyss) and Le Mystère Lucie by Jacques Matthey and Eric Michel.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.