State-funded, the Swiss Ciné-Journal was screened before the feature film in every cinema in the country from 1940 to 1975. Throughout this period, the 1,650 editions amounting to a total of 200 hours of footage reported on 9,000 subjects for Swiss audiences, capturing important events and precious moments of political, social and cultural life in Switzerland.
In 1975, when production stopped, the Swiss Ciné-Journal archives were entrusted to the Cinémathèque suisse, which has since ensured their conservation and promotion. Photographs conserved in the institutional archives of the Cinémathèque suisse document the adventurous relocation of this important collection that was packaged and transported using the means available at the time.
In 2015, Memoriav, the Cinémathèque suisse and the Swiss Federal Archives launched a collaborative project to publish every edition of the Swiss Ciné-Journal in all three linguistic versions on the Memobase online platform and provide online access to the Federal Archives.
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“Every week, the Swiss Ciné-Journal animates the nation’s screens with glimpses of Swiss life. It accomplishes its mission with great tact and objectivity – qualities that often go unnoticed by a public that is singularly unaware of the work of our national news organisations, whose historical and cultural importance is undisputed. We saw this in Basel, where Mr Hans Laemmel, editor-in-chief of the Swiss Ciné-Journal, presented a selection of the most typical subjects captured on film in our country over the past forty years. As a result, we were able to witness now-departed famous figures come to life on screen, such as Gandhi, Romain Rolland, André Gide, and Paul Eluard. Images of demonstrations or the arrival of refugees reminded us of a reality that is much closer than it seems. In less than two hours, we were able to peruse the most wonderful Swiss history book imaginable, a living, comprehensive history book that should be preserved for future generations.
Thanks to the kind understanding of Mr Hans Laemmel, the Swiss Ciné-Journal devoted a large part of one of its reports to the Cinémathèque suisse with a tour of the site by FIAF members, the presentation of numerous photographic documents and extracts from several notable films preserved in Lausanne.”
Extract from “Le deuxième festival du Film de demain à Bâle, du 16 au 25 octobre 1954”, Bulletin de la Cinémathèque suisse, No. 2, November–December 1954, p. 9