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La Suisse inconnue. La vallée de Lötschental (1916)
Frederick Burlingham
35mm transferred to dvd, 7 min, Cinémathèque Suisse
The American Frederick Harrison Burlingham was one of the many foreign
filmmakers and cameramen who were interested in the Swiss
mountains from 1899 on. He arrived in Switzerland before 1914 and set up a company in
Montreux to film locations such as the Matterhorn, the thermal spa of
Leukerbad, and the Aletsch glacier. Not much is left of the 50 or so films
which Burlingham produced. Thanks to the recent safeguarding of the Hoffmann collection two films were found. One of them was shot in 1916 in the valley of Lötschental – now traversed by an international railway line – in the german-speaking part of the Valais canton, which is very well-known among folklorists because of its traditional masks. Clearly disconcerted by the way of life and the dialect of the people he met there, Burlingham portrayed them in an ethnographic film as primitives.
Ectract from Rémy Phiton: www.cinetecadelfriuli.org
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Frederick Burlingham, La Suisse inconnue, La vallée de Lötschental (1916) |
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