Videoladen Zürich
«Zurich is Burning»

Anarchically impudent and self-ironical documentation of the youth uprising in Zurich in 1980. The film arose from a video project of the scene itself, chronologically accompanying the events (produced with the work of Markus Sieber, Werner Schweizer, Marcel Müller, Patricia Loggia, Thomas Krempke, and others). The prologue depicts Zurich as an inhuman concrete desert, rich but lacking any money for youth culture. The most important phases of the conflict follow: the opera house demonstration, the conversion of factory halls into an autonomous youth center, and the public debates about squatting. We see scenes from the legendary Swiss magazine broadcast of the television discussion 'Telebühne', in which representatives of the youth movement, disguised as the upright 'Herr und Frau Müller', provocatively demand a tougher approach and the use of napalm.

Rudolf Frieling