Richard Dindo passes away

Everything started off very badly. Born in Zurich in 1944, Richard Dindo left school at the age of 15 and began traveling. A self-taught filmmaker, he trained in cinema by immersing himself in films at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. His first feature, DES SUISSES DANS LA GUERRE D'ESPAGNE (1973), already announced his political engagement and the irony with which he reinterpreted history. In 1976, together with writer and journalist Niklaus Meienberg, he co-directed L’EXÉCUTION DU TRAÎTRE À LA PATRIE ERNST S., a detailed account of how a 23-year-old man from St. Gallen was shot in 1942 for stealing four grenades and an anti-tank grenade, which he had sold to a German agent for around 800 Swiss francs - during a time when many Swiss industrialists were trading with the Nazis right under the government's nose.

Upon its release, this film, which openly challenges the official version of Swiss history, created a violent controversy, particularly in the media and in the federal parliament. Despite its international success, the film was not awarded the Swiss Quality Award, and Niklaus Meienberg was banned from writing in the media of the ‘Tages Anzeiger’, where he was a columnist.

Richard Dindo's fate was sealed. He would be a troublemaker. Someone who dares, time and time again, put his finger where it hurts. All the while maintaining, disillusioned, a distance that is both emotional and ironic towards his subject. Made in 1987, DANI, MICHI, RENATO UND MAX is, for example, an extraordinary account of police excesses and the disillusionment that followed the hopes stirred by the Züri Brännt movement – the Zurich May 68 uprising. 

Always deeply political, Richard Dindo regularly questions the past in the light of our present. Take GENÊT À CHATILA (1999): by accompanying Jean Genêt to Palestine, he awakens the ghosts of the Sabra and Chatila massacre. Or even CHARLOTTE, «VIE OU THÉATRE ?» (1992): through the work of the painter Charlotte Salomon, he brings the spectres of the Holocaust back to life. Or GRÜNINGERS FALL (1997): he evokes the memory of the St Gallen police captain Paul Grüninger, who saved the lives of several hundred Austrian Jews fleeing their country and the Nazis, but who was dismissed and sentenced to a lifetime ban from the St Gallen police force.

Richard Dindo loved making the invisible visible. Blending traces of reality and literary fiction, he can be seen giving life, body and voice to the latest project of actor and filmmaker Max Haufler in MAX HAUFLER, ‘DER STUMME’, awakening the spirits of Arthur Rimbaud's relatives (ARTHUR RIMBAUD, UNE BIOGRAPHIE, 1991), evoking the great writer MAX FRISCH in JOURNAL I-III (1981), without ever filming him, encountering the ghost of Che Guevara (in ERNESTO «CHE» GUEVARA: LE JOURNAL DE BOLIVIE, 1994) or capturing the memory of Aragon, Matisse or Kafka. Dindo draws on their writings and their works to revive the past – a tribute to the dead and the absent. 

It is clear that the recurring theme of all his films is memory. And the memory of humanity is full of gaps that he hastens to fill with a stylistic relevance that remains disturbingly powerful to this day. To the point that he struggled, in recent years, to convince Switzerland to finance his works, even though he was undoubtedly one of the greatest masters of contemporary cinema.

The tribute paid to him jointly by the Festival Visions du Réel and the Cinémathèque Suisse in 2014 was not only deserved, it was essential. We were more than happy to welcome him to our premises. It was necessary to listen to him talk about his films as there was a lot to learn. His last visit, to the Capitole stage in 2019, was to present the stunning LE VOYAGE DE BASHÔ (2017 - 2018), a documentary fiction film about the Japanese poet Basho (1644 - 1694), the ‘spiritual father’ of haiku poetry. Precisely, making the invisible visible, through a few words...

It is said that shortly before his death, as he was returning to the hospital, he felt that he was losing his memory a little. A final wink of fate for someone who had spent his life reviving memories. We will miss him deeply.

Frédéric Maire
Director of the Cinémathèque Suisse    

Richard Dindo's Website