Balzli & Cie Filmproduktion

An avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith.

Since weeks it’s cold and wet. It’s already late, Karl Winter is on his way home. Under dark circumstances he accidentally meets a woman of mysterious fascination – Martha… And so begins a love story of fatal dynamics which throws Karl far off the tracks of reason. Wicked dreams and subliminal changes in Karl’s surroundings confirm his feelings that with Martha the uncanniness has also entered his life.

They live in junk, talk nonsense, and paint a new picture of the world. Then Johanna comes along and turns everything upside down again. Almost like in a real movie, doom, love, and death loom large.

On June 22, 1991, photographer Chäschpu misses the decisive goal in the Swiss Cup final. His entire life, he has successfully stumbled through his permanent provisional existence. On this day, Graszena memorizes the drinks menu of her new employer. She takes what life as a foreign waitress has to offer. Tina, the student from the countryside, runs away from home. But she always does that. Night nurse Lucie lives in her world of books. No wonder she sleepwalks and has to put up bars before going to bed. Özgür from Turkey is different: he dreams of great happiness. And because that is so hard to find, he imagines he has already found it. Here in Switzerland, of course. What connects these five very different characters?

Filmmakers Nicolaus Humbert and Werner Penzel examine the nature of nomadic existence in this documentary, from the literal nomads of North Africa to the more metaphorical kind of wanderer, such as American poet and ex-pat Robert Lax. Humbert and Penzel focus especially on the nomad's paradoxical ability to fully inhabit every moment while remaining coolly detached from specific locales and anxious thoughts about the past or future.