The Swiss film director, Francis Reusser, has just passed away. He was 78. He had been ill for quite a while. To quote Frédéric Maire, head of the Swiss Cinémathéque, (my translation) “He was, without a doubt, one of the key critical Swiss witnesses of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, while continuing to grumble, to love filming and to love life.”
I first met Francis at the Fine Arts School in Geneva in the early 80’s. I was what they called a ‘mature’ student. He was one of my teachers and head of a cinema workshop with François Albera. Francis wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. Maybe that’s why we didn’t always see eye to eye. That said, he had the cinema in his blood and he undertook everything with passion as can be seen in these few photos extracted from my Art Notebooks from 1982.
