In a high-tech company, over 1,200 people are busy checking the billions of Swiss francs that flow through the country every day in the form of endless data streams. From the mass of employees—absorbed by the labyrinthine building, overwhelmed by avalanches of language—individual figures emerge: the gold card clerk, the product manager, the department head, the PC support technician, the key account manager, the director. The camera follows their inconspicuous gestures, ways of speaking, and glances. Woven together in a serial montage to form a dense structure of images and sound, a world becomes tangible in which the subtle violence of electronic technologies shapes interpersonal communication and leaves its mark even in private spaces. The film premiered at the Solothurn Film Festival in 1994 and received the FIPRESCI Prize at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film in the same year. It was also awarded the Zurich Film Prize and a recognition award from the city of Lucerne. The film was praised by critics for its innovative visual language and its critical examination of the modern world of work. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung emphasized that the film was “staged as a sensual experience” and used “color and rhythm” as defining elements.

Keywords

• technology

Actors

• Walter Winkler
• Gerda Schmidheiny
• Mirjam Langhans
• Ueli Kunz
• Marco De Luca
• Maya Bertossa

Director

• Thomas Imbach