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These days, such topics as world peace, armament and disarmament have become timeworn, rendering the pictures seen on television and in newspapers commonplace. Fully aware of this fact, I set out - not without zeal - to bring forward once again the well-worn images of the summit talks between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva.
The film is a reproduction of the days during the summit and rendered, in fact, as exactly as possible as the images, still wonderfully vivid, had been engraved into my memory. I gathered the pictures for the film, on the one hand, as an onlooker in Geneva and, on the other hand, by processing the old television footage.
Roman Signer contributed to the coverage of the story, by providing the refrain and commentary, as well as by breathing new life into it.
World peace, disarmament and re-armament are hackneyed phrases, and the images we see on television and in the paper are hackneyed images. It was with this in mind that I set out – with more than a little delight – to drag the long worn-out images of the Geneva summit between Reagan and Gorbachev into the spotlight once again. ...The film revives those days gone by as exactly as possible, in accordance with the wonderfully flickering pictures that had branded them selves in my memory. I gathered some of the material as a spectator in Geneva, but also tweaked the old TV images until they had been prodded into obedience. The framework for the story was provided by Roman Signer: refrain, commentary and fresh air. - Peter Liechti
Festivals:
- Solothurner Filmtage, 1987
- Locarno, 1987
- IFF Rotterdam 2009
- IFF La Rochelle, 2010