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FILM STUDIES

Romania Grand Voyage workshop

with Radu Jude

<meta charset="UTF-8">On the first year of their Master degree, students embark on a “Grand Voyage” to discover the region and a filmmaker. In 2025, they went to Romania.

FILM STUDIES

Kosovo Grand Voyage workshop

with Kaltrina Krasniqi

Each year, students of the Master's program undertake a "Great Trip" to discover the territory of a filmmaker. In 2022, they went to Kosovo with the director and screenwriter Kaltrina Krasniqi.

FILM STUDIES

Directing workshop with Alejo Moguillansky

with Alejo Moguillansky

A 1 week filmmaking workshop led by the Argentinian director, screenwriter and producer Alejo Moguillansky with the students of the Master in Film - major direction.

FILM STUDIES

Fei Fan – Fenni in Wonderland

with Elene Naveriani

Fenni in Wonderland is a short fiction film in which I also use a documentary approach. In this film, the boundary between reality and dream is blurred by magical realism in order to represent the Chinese immigrant community in Paris through my personal point of view.

FILM STUDIES

Anna Joos – Niederurnen, GL

with Verena Paravel

Once called ‘the magic material', asbestos has become an invisible evil. In a forgotten valley of Switzerland, death, carried by the wind, forever and ever accompanies the everyday lives of the Italian asbestos factory workers. They are silenced by the Swiss industrial state. But the insides of their bodies bear witness to their story: their asbestos-injured lungs breathe in and out, intermingling with the repetitive industrial sounds, like heartbeats, in which they were once immersed. The binary rhythm of the Tarantella, a southern Italian ritual, once had the power to counter an invisible evil.

FILM STUDIES

Saleh Kashefi – Overture

with Katharina Wyss

Beneath all the noise lays silence. Overture is a cinematic journey which tries to illustrate how silence can be covered with noise through telling a typical story of a human being and their way of coping with life’s suffering in the modern world.

FILM STUDIES

Theofanis Papadopoulos – Firelight

with Katharina Wyss

Firelight explores my fear of non-existence after death and that of imagining to no longer interact with an environment. It confronts the characters with the lies they tell themselves, in order to be able to survive in this absurd situation. It is about an awareness and the point of no return, where, confronted with reality, we also become aware of the fact to vainly create meaning in our lives, to make them livable. Thus, we hide from the mortal misery that awaits us every day, as in every room of the mansion. We create meanings and explanations to comfort ourselves, except that being aware of it and accepting this absurdity is equivalent to no longer being afraid of it.

FILM STUDIES

Valentina Parati – Acciaio

with Verena Paravel

A lullaby of engines and love, this short movie is an emotional and hypersensorial journey into the deep world of mechanophilia.

FILM STUDIES

Loïs de Goumoëns – Rase Campagne

with Anne Brouillet

Rase Campagne is a feature-length comedy screenplay project. It tells the story of Elia, a helpful and polite young woman from Vaud, Switzerland, who lives in fear of disturbing... or even worse, of disappointing. One day, a ZAD arrives in her quiet region and through an unfortunate combination of circumstances, we believe she is one of the ZADists! Elia will try to prove the opposite but the adventure will prove difficult when the different forces present try to rally her to their cause. In this story, I am interested in probing Swiss “neutrality” and the consequences of refusing commitment, whether emotional or political. The project is at the V1 stage and is therefore under development.

FILM STUDIES

Jonathan Daza Ospina – Silencio

with Verena Paravel

Silencio is a hybrid film that narrates the story of a sound recorder from a big city in Colombia who goes to the jungles in the pacific coast, in search of the sounds from a past that is still haunting the present. A personal journey where she meets local activists of different generations engaged with the preservation of memory, and where music and oral traditions enact as liminal spaces in which mourning invokes and shakes the ghosts of a colonial heritage before the promises of the future. It is a film that traces a cartography of sound and archives the ecological present from a historical perspective, examining sensorially the embodiments of resistance in contexts of armed conflict in the west of Colombia.

FILM STUDIES

Sara Dutch – Mife et Miso vont en bateau

with Elene Naveriani

In the near future, Xzir, a woman in her thirties, finds herself faced with an unwanted pregnancy. In the ultra-digital, techno-authoritarian society in which she lives, pregnancies are automatically entered in a national register and monitored by the state, abortions are banned. Xzir is going to take the illegal path of the DarkWeb to her pregnancy, whatever the cost.

FILM STUDIES

Antoine Scalese – Hypersex

with Anne Brouillet

My diploma project is a screenplay for a feature film titled Hypersex, exploring the fantasy romance genre. It tells the story of Alfa, a young man who lends his appearance to a model of a sex android and manages to divert one sample in hopes of restoring lost intimacy with his elusive partner. Quickly, by substituting it for himself, he loses control of the situation and finds himself confronted with intense affects. This screenplay uses sexuality as a fully-fledged dramatic force within the overall narrative dynamic. Intertwined with this, the narrative rhetoric of love's return offers a queer perspective to the film, portraying the complex relationship between two male characters who, despite their selfish behaviors, choose not to give up on each other.

FILM STUDIES

Loris Ciaburri – Lux Vitae

with Anne Brouillet

Lux Vitae is a feature-length screenplay developed over two years as part of the ECAL/HEAD Master of Cinema program. The project was built from a synopsis, through various treatment versions to a V1 screenplay. Anne Brouillet supervised the writing process throughout. Lux Vitae is a film set in La Chaux-de-Fonds, incorporating the local socio-historical context. The film follows the story of Anica, a polyamorous, pansexual watchmaker who, following an accident, becomes a paraplegic. Her sex life is limited, so she decides to seek assisted suicide and meets Max, an EXIT counsellor. These two people, totally opposed in their sexuality, come together and bond intimately.

FILM STUDIES

Pablo Guscetti – Chi ch'ien piü chiö

with Katharina Wyss

Nena, 40, lives in the valley in Ticino where she grew up. Giulia, an urbanite in her thirties, is visiting her family's village for the first time in order to conduct field research for her post-doctorate. Nena reluctantly acts as Giulia's research guide. Animosity grows quickly between the two. The protagonists discover that mysterious and murderous attacks are ravaging the valley they left behind. Panic-stricken, the two women head for a high-altitude refuge. But this respite is quickly replaced by heartbreak. The storm is close, and so are the and monsters. Giulia and Nena face each other in the midst of horror.

FINE ARTS

FILM STUDIES

FINE ARTS

FILM STUDIES

Archive as a Creative Act: The Absolute Cinema of Gregory J. Markopoulos and the Temenos Utopia

with François Bovier

Artists who produce archives from their own work approach archival activity as a creative gesture: here, the archive literally becomes a work of art. In parallel with the “archival impulse” that has run through contemporary art since the 1960s, this research project examines the “performative agency” of archives when they are constituted from “image acts”. The selected corpus is based on an extremely singular case, the cinematographic work of Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992) and the Temenos archives.

FILM STUDIES

Directing workshop with Yann Gonzalez

with Yann Gonzalez

In partnership with La Manufacture, the Master Cinema ECAL/HEAD  invited director Yann Gonzalez to take part in a directing workshop.

FILM STUDIES

Léa Célestine Bernasconi – The mountains are still growing (Sound)

with Nathalie Vidal

My job was to create the soundtrack for this film from sound recording to mixing and editing.

FILM STUDIES

Victor Comte – Carne (Screenplay)

with Nadine Lamari, Alice Winocour, Michel Spinoza

This is the first draft of a feature film script, written over the two years of the MA programme.

FILM STUDIES

Marine Maye – Mountain Flesh (Sound)

with Nathalie Vidal

The summer idyll is disturbed by recurring noises while a mountain village loses its foundations.

FILM STUDIES

Yatoni Roy Cantu – Ramboy (Sound)

with Nathalie Vidal

Ramboy provided me with the opportunity to look after the whole sound process of a film, from the sound recording to the music, the editing and the mixing. It was a real adventure.

FILM STUDIES

Jiahui Huang – The mountains are still growing (Editing)

with Gion Reto Killias

Laurence, a Parisian in her fifties, is spending a few days in an isolated holiday cottage in southern France. There she meets Antoine, the young owner of the place. Antoine is a little boorish and macho and tries to seduce her. But Laurence is there for a specific purpose: to give him a letter containing a secret.

FILM STUDIES

Antoine Flahaut – The Parade (Editing)

with Gion Reto Killias

The editing of this film was a meticulous balancing act, consisting less of searching for clean and sophisticated cuts than of finding for each scene the brutality, the power, the troubled swirl of emotions that inhabit this group of teenagers fleeing through the streets of Athens.

FILM STUDIES

Selin Dettwiler – Ramboy (Editing)

with Gion Reto Killias

On Achill Island, on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland, Cian hopes to spend his summer vacation playing soccer with his friends. But his grandfather Martin reckons the time has come to introduce him to farm work in order to pass on his craft to the next generation.

FILM STUDIES

Massimo Del Gaudio – Le défilé (Sound)

with Nathalie Vidal

I worked on Michail Galanopoulos’ graduation film: Le défilé. I went to Greece in November 2021 to work on the film as sound recordist and location mixer. I then worked on the post production as sound editor, sound designer and mixer.

FILM STUDIES

Maison Rousseau mandate

Production and shooting of films for the mandate of the Maison Rousseau & Littérature, Geneva. The students of the Master Cinéma were supervised by the director Lionel Rupp.

FILM STUDIES

Master Cinéma - scriptwriting major

Shooting of a sequence from Version 1 of the script by the students of Master Cinema - scriptwriting

FILM STUDIES

Mandate for the Maison Rousseau et Littérature, Genève

The Maison Rousseau et Littérature (MLR) in Geneva commissioned the ECAL/HEAD Master in Cinema to produce the audiovisual works for the museum, which reopened its doors in the old town of Geneva  after a period of restructuring in Spring 2021.

FILM STUDIES

Jury Réseau Cinéma CH

Participation of Master Cinema students Léa Célestine Bernasconi and Leopold Helbich Frey in the Jury of the Réseau Cinéma CH during the 35th edition of the Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF)

FILM STUDIES

Video direction

by Matthias Joulaud, Michail Galanopoulos, Antoine Flahaut

Video of the concert "Shawati" by Bedouin Burger, the Ensemble Dīwan and the students of HEM.

FILM STUDIES

Filmmaking workshop

with Danielle Lessovitz

A 2-weeks filmmaking workshop led by the American director and scriptwriter Danielle Lessovitz with the students of the Master in Film - major direction and scriptwriting.

FILM STUDIES

Actors' Direction Workshop

with Fulvio Bernasconi

Actors' Direction Workshop, led by the Swiss filmmaker Fulvio Bernasconi, in collaboration with the acting students of Les Teintureries, theatre school in Lausanne.

FILM STUDIES

Master Cinema - Major in Sound

with Felix Blume

Sound creation workshop for the Master Cinema students - Major in Sound - directed by Felix Blume, sound artist and sound engineer.

FILM STUDIES

Sound performance

Creation by Ensemble Vide, with the Master Cinema students, in coproduction with Ensemble Contrechamps, Geneva.

FILM STUDIES

Workshop Rousseau mandate

Study trip of the Master in Film students in Val de Travers, on the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to work on the first stages of the Mandate proposed by the MLR - Maison Rousseau et Littérature, Geneva.

FILM STUDIES

Olivia Frey – Ecce homo (editing)

by Olivia Frey

Juan Antonio finds his father who is back home after a long absence. There, during the preparation of the most important religious festival of the city : the Ecce homo; father and son go to share in solitude, their hatreds for each other. oliviaandreafrey@googlemail.com

FILM STUDIES

Ketsia Stocker – Europa (production)

by Ketsia Stocker

Pedro, working in Switzerland, must take one cow to the slaughterhouse at the same time his mother dies in Spain. ketsia.stocker@gmail.com