Founded in Geneva in 1951 by cinema enthusiasts including Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta, the Ciné-club universitaire de Genève (CCU) has spent 75 years bringing audiences together around singular films and shared discoveries.
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the CCU looks back across more than seven decades of cinema with a programme of 30 films spanning continents, genres, generations and perspectives — while looking towards the future of the seventh art.
Ciel Sourdeau’s eight-minute, seventeen-second video unfolds as a subversive tutorial: part gore, part experimental film, it repurposes pedagogical forms into an improvised, transgressive bricolage. Mixed by Adrien Kessler, the piece layers tactile sound and rough-edged visuals to probe bodies, identity and the limits of instruction. Its stripped, confrontational aesthetic alternates shock and dark humour, inviting a re-examination of learning rituals and the politics of representation through intimate, unsettling imagery.
Opening: 3 September, 18:00
An audiovisual projection followed by a conversation with the creative team behind the stage work PESSOA – Since I’ve Been Me, this program pays tribute to Robert Wilson, a pivotal figure in theatre and the visual arts. Through archival footage and testimonies it traces Wilson’s singular aesthetic and his collaborations with artists such as Philip Glass, Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag and Laurie Anderson. The session explores his visual language, theatrical architecture and lasting influence on contemporary performance.
An intimate retrospective devoted to director Patricia Plattner, presenting a selection of her films alongside a reading-performance and a small exhibition. Plattner’s cinema favors close human encounters and observational compositions, blending subtle humour with poignant emotional truth. The programme highlights her attentive direction and narrative economy, tracing recurring themes of identity, everyday intimacy and the passage of time. Screenings offer a chance to rediscover the quiet intensity and warm, lyrical realism of her work. An event presented by the association Le Bazar de la Sirène in collaboration with Luna Films and the City of Carouge.
On the program:
– Special screenings at Cinéma Bio
– An inaugural staged reading on September 5, at the Théâtre des Amis
– An exhibition, Le Petit Bazar de Patricia, at Place du Temple
Two cinephile-focused screenings and a collaborative workshop present neglected perspectives by women filmmakers. Gertrud Pinkus’s Il valore della donna è il suo silenzio offers a contemplative portrait that privileges silence and restrained mise-en-scène, inviting reflection on gender and memory; Pinkus will be present. Une autre histoire, by Tula Roy and Christoph Wirsing, explores the history of Swiss feminism from 1910 to 1991.
A Wikipedia workshop accompanies the programme, focusing on documenting Swiss women directors – In French. To register: info@loreleyfilms.ch
Directed by the association Grave’Side Family, this observational documentary follows a year-long grassroots effort that sends fifteen young people from Thônex to Ambohimanatrika, Madagascar, to help build a village water network. Through intimate portraits and sunlit, hand-held sequences, the film explores youth, solidarity and civic engagement, privileging everyday gestures over grand narratives. The camera lingers on labor, laughter and cultural exchange, offering a textured, human-scale account of collective commitment and the emotional rhythms of communal work.
In French.
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet observes a life of ordered precision in this intimate drama about work, care and the unforeseen. Gabrielle, a 55-year-old surgeon and department head, navigates a demanding professional existence that leaves little space for personal life. When a novelist arrives to research a book, her carefully calibrated balance begins to shift. The film explores responsibility, desire and the quiet cost of devotion through restrained compositions, close textures and a contemplative emotional rhythm that lingers beyond the frame.
In presence of director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet and actress Léa Drucker.
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