Day is Done

Thomas Imbach, 2011, Switzerland, Digital Projection, 111 minutes

“Day Is Done becomes a poetic but also wryly humorous study of the selfish artist trying to play the indifferent God, but ending up revealing himself as all too human. Day Is Done contains images of ravishing though unconventional urban beauty.” -Screen Daily

First the smoking chimney, which the telephoto lens draws up close to us. Then the trains, the clouds and the flocks of birds, the panorama of the city viewed through a wide-angle lens. Airplanes. Time-lapse. Slow-motion. Later, dark rain clouds, sun, snow, moonlight. The street in front of the building: warehouses before which junk is sorted, wine is delivered, a party is thrown. Burning cars, a terrible motorcycle accident. A young woman who day for day picks up her mail and the newspaper, crossing into the frame from the left and returning from the right. In all the years, she never seems to notice the man standing at his window with a camera watching her, recording life as it unfolds in front of his studio. It is only through the messages on the filmmaker’s answering machine that the viewer notes the passage of time. In the beginning these messages seem a bit funny: calls from happy or disappointed girlfriends, holiday greetings and congratulations. At that point, they are still without any context – but the context soon becomes clear. From then on, every message takes on a historical significance. Illness, death, pregnancy, birth, a break-up, successes, failures. It comes as a shock when we realize that we are in the middle of a life that is more dramatic than any fiction.-Christoph Terhechte

Christoph Terhechte has been head of the Forum since June, 2001. Terhechte was born in 1961 in the city of Münster, Westphalia. He studied political science and journalism at the University of Hamburg and has worked as a film journalist since 1984. In 1987, he was hired as a writer in Hamburg for the “taz” daily newspaper. In 1988 he moved to Paris for two years, working as a freelance journalist. Up until 1990, he also worked on the film selection and editorial work of the European Low Budget Film Forum in Hamburg. In 1991 he became film editor at the Berlin city magazine “tip”. Christoph Terhechte has been a member of the selection committee of the Forum since the end of 1997. In June, 2001 he was appointed head of this Berlinale section.

Thomas Imbach was born in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1962. He is a maverick Swiss director, whose work is visual, edgy and performance driven. With WELL DONE (1994) and GHETTO (1997) he established his trademark audio-visual style based on a combination of cinema-verité camera-work and fast-paced computer controlled editing. In 2007 he founded Okofilm Productions together with director Andrea Štaka.

The DAY IS DONE Band

The composer and music producer Balz Bachmann put together a hand-picked group of musicians to reinterpret the 12 songs used in the film. The songs were recorded during a 3-day live studio session at the Sonar Studio in Zurich. The DAY IS DONE Band’s distinctive style – between folk rock and punk-inspired bar sound – is the unifying element in an eclectic playlist ranging from Bob Dylan’s gospel blues and Syd Barret›s homage to James Joyce, all the way to Alphaville’s 1980s synthpop and Conor Oberst›s edgy indie rock.