Celebrity Biographies
Alain Tanner
He is remembered for titles like “Jonás, who will be 25 in the year 2000”, and “Messidor”. Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner died on September 11, 2022, at the age of 92, as announced by the association that bears his name. He was considered the father of the Swiss cinema renaissance in the 1970s, when he became a benchmark for subsequent generations of film professionals.
Born in Geneva on December 6, 1929, Alain Tanner studied economics. With Claude Goretta he founded in 1951 the university cinema club of his hometown. At twenty-three he enlisted for two years in the merchant marine. After a stay in London, he became passionate about cinema and worked at the British Film Institute; him becoming a production assistant.
In 1957, Alain Tanner shot Nice Time (Picadilly la nuit) , his first film, signed with Claude Goretta . He won the Experimental Film Award at the Nice Festival. After his return to his country, he became a director for Télévision Suisse Romande, where he was responsible for several documentaries. In 1962, he founded the Swiss Association of Filmmakers. He shot with little budget, but always achieved international repercussions. “For me, the important thing is to maintain that independence, to be allowed to control my own films, in which I work with limited budgets and acting in the roles of my own producer. I am not rich. I earn my living making films. My films “He once commented.
With the aforementioned Claude Goretta , Michel Soutter, Jean-Louis Roy and Jean-Jacques Lagrange, Alain Tanner creates Groupe 5, with which the Young Swiss Cinema is promoted. In the seventies he triumphed with titles such as Carlos, dead or alive (1969), La salamandra (1971), Vuelta de África (1972), El medio del mundo (1974) and Jonas, who will turn 25 in the year 2000 (1976 ). Above all, Messidor (1979) is remembered , which he always considered a precedent for Ridley Scott ‘s Thelma and Louise .. Despite the fact that his cinema only reached moviegoers, he did not consider himself an elitist filmmaker. “I don’t consider myself an intellectual, nor do I think my cinema is, despite the fact that every creative process is intellectual,” he said in an interview. “In no way do I consider myself a cerebral filmmaker, nor am I sentimental. I don’t think my films are difficult or intellectual.”
Light Years , his only film in English –filmed in Ireland– won the Grand Prix at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. In the 1990s, the director continued to be very active, with titles such as Lady M’s Diary, starring Myriam Mézières , his fetish actress. Alain Tanner retired after a chapter of the television series La faute à Rousseau , from 2012.