The 20th anniversary of director Daniel Schmid's death

Daniel Schmid (1941–2006) was a key figure in the New Swiss Cinema, alongside directors such as Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta. “With his highly original body of work, he was the most cosmopolitan and one of the most significant filmmakers on the Swiss scene,” according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.

Schmid began his film career in 1966, when he was accepted into the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and attended it for two years. Together with the German directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Schroeter, he took part in the student protests in Munich and Berlin.

Play with Shapes

His political stance is already evident in his first film, *Tonight or Never* (1972). “What I’ve always enjoyed is playing with forms, creating confusion,” Schmid said. “My work is like a smuggler’s journey between North and South, between poetry and cinema, between documentary and fiction.”

"La Paloma" (1974), hailed by critics as his masterpiece, brings all these elements together. He then gained fame with "Shadows of Angels" (1976), the film adaptation of Fassbinder's play "The City, the Garbage, and Death." The following year, Schmid returned to Switzerland.

This was followed by works such as *Violanta* (1977), *Words Usually Come Too Late* (1982), *Tosca’s Kiss* (1984), “Jenatsch” (1987), “Off-Season” (1992), and the film satire “Beresina, or The Last Days of Switzerland” (1999).

Film and Opera

In addition, between 1984 and 2001, Schmid staged operas, such as Vincenzo Bellini’s *I puritani* in Geneva in 1995 and Giuseppe Verdi’s *Il trovatore* in Zurich in 1996. At the Zurich Opera House, he staged four Italian bel canto operas, and three at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva—a preference that was also evident in his film *Der Kuss der Tosca*. Swiss Films writes: “The art of staging, the ‘mise en scène,’ is one of Schmid’s great passions. Nothing is left to chance; Schmid has the final say down to the smallest detail when it comes to the design of the spaces, the lighting, the set, and the colors.”

Schmid was born on December 26, 1941, in Flims, Graubünden, and died there as well, on the night of August 5–6, 2006, from cancer. Starting in 1962, he studied history, art history, and political science in Berlin while also working as an interpreter, journalist, and translator before turning to film. He was originally listed in the civil registry as Daniel Schmidt. However, he signed his works as Daniel Schmid.

During his time in Berlin, Schmid openly lived as a gay man. This was not reflected in his films, but in 1969, for example, he appeared as a narrator in Rosa von Praunheim’s early queer film *Sisters of the Revolution*. According to Schmid’s cinematographer and friend Renato Berta, the resistance Schmid encountered was not solely due to the innovative nature of his filmmaking. In his autobiography *Photogrammes*, Berta wrote that he could not shake the feeling “that behind the hostility toward Daniel lay, above all, a great deal of homophobia.”

The Hotel as a Stage

Now, twenty years after Schmid’s death, the Hotel Schweizerhof in Flims—the town where he was born and died—is screening the Graubünden native’s films in its historic halls and on the rooftop terrace. Schmid actually shot many of these films at the hotel. “I grew up in a hotel lobby, surrounded by all its different moods. A place where appearance and reality are constantly intertwined. This stage, with its interweaving of illusion and reality, has always inspired me and continues to fascinate me,” the director once said.