Kurt Gloor(1942-1997)
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Kurt Gloor was one the very few truly unique Swiss film directors. Born
in 1942 in Zurich, he studied art and graphics in Zurich and later
worked as an assistant cameraman for advertisement films. At the same
time, Gloor, who believed in the revolutionary force of film, created a
couple of short movies in which already his most characteristic topics
appear: the loneliness of urban life, the subjugation of women, the old
and the children, the fragile status of mountain farmers, the
governmental suppression of drug addicts, the controversial methods of
psychiatry, etc. In his first feature length movie, "Die plötzliche
Einsamkeit des Konrad Steiner/The Sudden Loneliness of Konrad Steiner"
(1976, Gloor portrayed the 75 years old shoemaker Steiner, whose wife
has died and whose apartment and working place have been canceled.
Since Steiner refuses to go to an assistant living home, the Swiss
government sends the young and attractive social worker Claudia, with
whom Steiner falls in love and starts his struggle against the
governmental suppression of old people. In Gloors "Der Erfinder/The
Inventor" (1981), Bruno Ganz plays Jakob Nüssli who invented a car that
already exists. This movie is a monumental for all those people who do
not have the luck to be mentioned in a lexicon, but who had a good idea
at the wrong time. To what extent Kurt Gloor was such an inventor
himself, is not quite clear, but he took his own life on September 20th
1997 in Zurich.