«A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.»

«The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again…»
Walter Benjamin

I still remember the names, and when I close my eyes, I see children’s faces, some blurred and faded, others amazingly alive. In my primary school class there were all kinds of children, fat and thin, wallflowers and show-offs, workers‘ daughters and small- business sons. Despite the social and cultural differences, the common experiences shaped us more than the differences: We lived in the same village, were children of the economic boom, we laughed at the same jokes, saw the same TV shows, loved the Swiss comedian Emil, Wienerschnitzel and Coupe Danmark. We grew up in a relatively homogeneous society. Most of us had never been abroad, and there were only two or three children in our class whose parents had immigrated from another country. Our grandparents had lived in the same apartment for decades and usually worked for the same employer their entire life.

A few years ago I met some of my former schoolmates again at a class reunion. Some of them I had not seen since 1977. Fascinated, I listened to their life stories. Some of the stories seemed to be predetermined by the environment in which these children had grown up, while the biographies of other school friends had taken surprising turns.

The conversations that evening brought back memories from my own life. It made me think of an uncle, who had been my favorite uncle for a long time. With him there were always great adventures. He owned a boat on Lake Zurich, and we ate out almost every day, and I loved boats and restaurants. Later he gave me long lectures about his views on life, for example about the fact that „negroes“ were cheerful people, but still quite childish, too childish to work seriously or to rule a country by themselves. No wonder that I got into terrible fights with him when my political consciousness awakened and I began to take part in protests against the apartheid regime.

Then a different memory came to my mind: In Sunday School, the priest showed us horrible pictures of famine, war zones and slums. «See how much misery there is in this world», the man of God exclaimed thunderously, only to remind us immediately that it was only thanks to the grace of God that we were so much better off than others, because the Creator had decided to let us live in peaceful Switzerland instead of Mali or Vietnam. Therefore, the priest continued, we should stop whining and complaining when something didn’t go according to our wishes, and just consider ourselves lucky and thank God for our privileges. «Humility, children, humility», the clergyman said, «this is what makes a true Christian!» The priest’s words tormented my young mind. I wondered why God had given me of all people the grace to be born in a rich, peaceful country? And what would the consequences be if I had been born somewhere else: Would I still be me or would I be another person? What is the self anyway, just a random construction, whose essence depends essentially on place and time? If so, I thought, the grace of God the priest had talked about would not be a personal gesture bestowed on me, but a product of chance, just like my self and my consciousness.

These memories of a little boy’s existential questions inspired my imagination that evening on my way home from the class reunion. In the following days I thought a lot about the complex relationship between time and place, society and individual, perception and self-awareness.

Then slowly an idea took shape: I wanted to tell the stories of a handful of people who were born on the same day as me, but in different countries and under completely different conditions. My own story was to serve as a foil through which I could view the biographies of my twins. The world has changed a great deal since I was born, from the decolonization of Africa to the social changes after May 68 and the fall of Soviet-style socialism twenty years later, from the deregulation of international capital markets to the emancipation of women and the increasing acceptance of sexual minorities, to name just a few of the many developments. I wanted to reflect on how the changes and events in the outside world shaped our personal consciousness and perception and how our consciousness and perception simultaneously shaped our actions and thus the era. What has happened to us between the poles of liberation and alienation, individualism and loneliness, tolerance and indifference, emancipation and paternalism, liberalization and neoliberalism?

With great enthusiasm, I set out to find the children of June 8, 1964, and through a simple Google search I came across several well-known contemporaries who had been born on the same day as me, such as an Olympic middle-distance runner and Bob Dylan’s sound engineer. I was particularly fascinated by Yelena Adrianovna Nikolayeva, the very first child whose parents had both been in space. I wrote to her repeatedly at an e-mail address I found online and tried to reach her by phone with the help of a Russian-speaking friend. But she did not respond to my questions

Through Facebook advertisements and with the help of local researchers I intensified my search, focusing mainly on places that had played an important role in my own biography: South Africa, the USA, Paris and China. Over the next few months, the number of possible protagonists grew to around three dozen. After I had corresponded with them and visited some of my «twins» personally, I selected four of them for my film.

Through Facebook advertisements and with the help of local researchers I intensified my search, focusing mainly on places that had played an important role in my own biography: South Africa, the USA, Paris and China. Over the next few months, the number of possible protagonists grew to around three dozen. After I had corresponded with them and visited some of my «twins» personally, I selected four of them for my film.

In «Parallel Lives», the protagonists talk about their lives from a radically subjective point of view thereby reflecting on how they have experienced contemporary history since June 1964. The film is a multi-layered kaleidoscope, an exciting and moving journey through the last decades using the means of cinema.

Even as we are in constant interaction with time and the environment, in the end everyone has only his life, his experience, his memories, and these memories are in constant change, constantly reshaped by the present. The film explores these dialectics that so fundamentally shape the human experience.
Frank Matter

 

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