Daniel Schweizer Interview

 

We say "Hello" to Mr. Daniel Schweizer, the first and probably the last individual outside the skinhead/Nationalist scene/movement who will be interviewed for this book. Can you please introduce yourself briefly?

 

I was born in Switzerland in 1959 and studied cinema in Geneva and Paris. I was an assistant director and worked with directors such as Robert Hossein and Andrzej Zulawski before abandoning fiction to devote myself to documentary film. I have directed about twenty short and feature films which have been awarded and selected in many international festivals such as Leeds, Rio, Vancouver, Locarno and received the Grand Prix of the International Film Festival on Human Rights FIFDH and the Best Director Award at the Pyongyang Film Festival. I am known for my three films on skinheads and the extreme right, Skin or Die, Skinhead Attitude and White Terror, which were broadcast on the main European television channels before I became involved in the defence of the Amazon forest. As a filmmaker and anthropologist, I have been accompanying the struggles of the main Amerindian communities for over twenty years in their demands for the preservation of the land. I have made several films with indigenous peoples: Dirty Paradise, Dirty Gold War, Amazonian Cosmos. I am currently preparing a documentary in Sumatra with men and orangutans on the protection of these great apes threatened with extinction.

 

You are the documentalist who created "Skin or die" (1998) "Skinhead attitude" (2003) and "White terror" (2005). How did you interest in the skinhead subculture and scene has started? How did you managed to get in touch with the people filmed in your first documentary?

My interest in the subcultures of the skinhead scene came first from my interest in garage-rock music, punk and then Oi. I first went to UK Subs, Cockney Rejects and Sham69 gigs in the 80s and discovered a whole incredible music scene in London. At the time I was making little videos and then I made two feature films about the AIDS generation and young people on the edge. My third film, Helldorado, was about punks in Geneva who lived in a squatted villa and among them was a skinhead who introduced me to other bands, including Skrewdriwer. At the same time there were concerts organised underground by Olivier and that's how I contacted him, saying that I was interested in this subject. I wanted to film these concerts that were taking place in Switzerland and that's how it all started.

So, lets gets started in chronological order from the first one "Skin or die". (Hence, one of the main characters in it, Oliver from Switzerland sent his regards...) So tell me about this one filmed almost 25 years ago...

The first concert I filmed was with the Polish band Konkwista 88 and the French band Fraction Hexagone. It was a very impressive concert for me and there was a whole police force in place to control this gathering. From then on I understood that this movement was confined to a form of clandestinity and that the media had quite preconceived ideas. From then on I considered the extreme right-wing skinhead movement as an underground subculture and that it was interesting to try to understand what was going on in a certain fringe of the youth that had become radicalised. I then went to Warsaw to meet Polish skinheads in order to establish international connections. In Switzerland there was the emergence of the Hammerskins and the press was on edge with this subject. Olivier put me in contact with members of Blood &Honour who were exiled in Denmark at the headquarters of DNSB, the Danish Nazi party. It was there that I first met Marcel Schilf and Marko Jasa Jarvinen. Marcel and Jasa gave me a first interview and we promised to meet again. This was the beginning of a long adventure where with their support, even though I didn't belong to this scene, I was accepted like an ethnologist filming a wild tribe. When Swiss television and ARTE saw my images, they agreed to co-produce this film "Skin or Die", which showed exclusively the extreme right-wing skinhead scene. The film quickly had a certain impact in the media and I discovered that I was being watched by the Swiss secret service, the federal police, because they didn't understand how I could have filmed this reality so closely with a camera. At the same time there was a strong reaction from traditional or left-wing skinheads who criticised the film and said that the media were only interested in neo-Nazis.

So, when you have finished your first film, what motivated you to proceed with this topic and make the other two?

What motivated me to make Skinhead Attitude was to tell for the first time the complex story of the skinhead movement with the different musical and political influences that make up this proletarian subculture. There was no film dedicated to the complexity of this movement. I wanted to look at the beginnings in the 1960s and then the emergence of the far right with Ian Stuart Donaldson. So I prepared a dossier and submitted it to various personalities who could tell me this story. Marcel Schilf and Jasa read this project and said OK to allow me to access the archives of the extreme right. The making of this film became a road movie to meet people who had lived through the stages of this musical and political culture. From Jimmy Pursey to Roddy Moreno and then Del O'Connor of Combat 18, Ian Stuart's comrade Blood Honour Scandinavia, the theorist Max Hammer. A story told as honestly as possible by characters from the scene and which brings the traditional, the left and the far right face to face.

 

Tell us a little bit more about the process of makings those three documentaries. How much time it took  to film them, how many different countries/continents and locations you have visited? Please be detailed if you keep track of all of them.

The process of making these films was above all to ensure that they reach the widest possible audience, because there is a taboo around this subject. Making a film about skinheads or the extreme right is often suspicious, usually the media like to make short and sensationalist subjects about this disturbing reality. For me, it was important to make films that could give a voice but also show the complexity of these social movements. My position has always been to say that I want to film reality as it is and as it is felt by these characters. I am a storyteller who tells a story that is often hidden because it is disturbing. With Skinhead Attitude we filmed in England, Germany, Sweden, France, the United States and Canada because that was the axis of the development and impact of this movement. White Terror then became clear to me because from what I had learned and having access to a lot of archives of the far right scene, I realised that this story was much more complex than I had imagined and that the reality was beyond any fictional film. It was the Kriegsberichter tapes that inspired me to make a documentary that shows that beyond the clichés, the neo-Nazi and white power scene was much more structured than one could imagine. From the Jasa videos produced in Finland, I wanted to conduct an investigation like a documentary thriller that shows that the Scandinavians are in direct contact with the Americans, the Serbs and the Russians, that these different extreme right-wingers are part of an international nebula that is waging a real political battle.

The question of the filmmaker's moral responsibility is one that breaks down throughout the films that deal with the radical far right. My basic rule is never to pretend to espouse a cause that is not my own, but to assert my right to discover and apprehend a different social and political space. My preconditions are to be able to attend events without any right of scrutiny, neither during the shooting nor afterwards.

 

You have interviewed and spend some time with Marcel Shilf and Jasa Ainaskin. What are your striking recollections from those times and from them as persons? In your opinion what was their main motivation for their activism?

Marcel Schilf and Jasa de Ainaskin were political activists engaged in a radical struggle. There was a real complementarity between these "brothers in arms". We spent a lot of time together in Denmark and talked about cinema, and what we had in common was that we really liked Alan Clarke's film "Made In Britain", a fictional film that dealt with the exclusion and violence of young people who were marginalised because of their social background. This character who could only exist by destroying and reducing all his chances of reintegration to zero. Moreover, Jasa's short fiction film "Made In Pori" was very much influenced by this film. At first it was the cinema that brought us together. Even though I never shared their political ideas and we were very different, there was a kind of respect between us.

Did you became close with any of individuals involved in your documentaries?

With Jasa we kept in touch all these years and even when he went to prison. We have always had a respectful relationship despite our differences.

Any funny (or scarry) story behind the scenes while you were filming?

Behind the scenes there are many anecdotes like the one where we were filming an underground concert in Poland and the police surrounded the building and in order to preserve the footage we had shot, we were exfiltrated through a secret passage and within minutes the police were storming the building. But one of the highlights was in Klippan, Sweden, during the shooting of a weekend gathering and concert under the aegis of Blood and Honour Scandinavia and there too the police and special forces surrounded the camp and blew up the wooden gate with a vehicle. At that moment my colleague and I were confronted by armed police who put us all against a fence and forced us to keep our arms raised. We were treated as extremists and this went on for over two hours in the sunshine while the police searched the camp for weapons. That day Jasa said to me "Welcome to the Swedish Nightmare".

Have you ever felt unsafe/unsecure while filming those documentaries? What was the "skinhead attitude" towards you at the gigs/rallies/socials you have visited?

I never felt insecure or threatened when filming with far-right groups because it was always very clear that if the organisers accepted our presence at a rally, it was also their responsibility to ensure our safety. It was up to my interlocutors to assess the situation and to know and to estimate whether our presence could cause problems. It was very clear that I never acted as an infiltrator and that if I had access to an event, I had the right and the permission to film.

Only once did we have problems, it was in Canada in Montreal where the Redskins were looking for us to break our equipment because they knew we had filmed right-wing people. We have always been completely transparent and never cheated or lied about the work we were doing.

As a professional filmmaker /documentalist please share with us your honest opinion on the Kriegsberichter video magazine. Not only about the content, but also on its production and the way the audio and video elements were combined.

Kriegsberichter the video magazine is the life work of Jasa who was a talented editor but sometimes the content bothered me and we discussed it. Jasa could have made fiction films as a director because he had talent, but he channelled all his creative energy into his political struggle. He had a whole audio-visual memory of the skinhead and extreme right-wing movement, which is exceptional, and there is the question of the legacy of all these archives which I hope will not disappear. With very modest means, he was a man-orchestrator who produced, archived, edited and published a radical, provocative and unique magazine.

You have been both to Western  and Eastern/Central Europe while working on the films. What were the main differences in the mentality of the people in the West compared to the ex-communist countries?

It's difficult for me to talk about the difference in mentalities, I knew Poland quite well and there wasn't much difference for me. For Russia I didn't stay long enough so it's difficult for me to give an opinion and answer this question. It is certain that I would like to discover these other countries of the former Eastern bloc.

 

You have also filmed Traditional, "left wing'' and SHARP (anti-racist) skinheads. In your eyes what is the difference between both radical sides of the scene, the left and the right wing?

A difficult question. I think that in the radical far left and particularly among the Redskins that I met, there is a posture that does not allow them to understand that we can talk to each other. There is a form of dogmatism and intolerance that makes everything black and white.

 

What was the reaction of the main audience after your documentaries were broadcasted? Any positive feedback and/or critics?

These films have all met with a fairly large audience either at festivals or on television, which means that these controversial subjects arouse a form of curiosity and interest. My films were well received because they took a different look at these phenomena. These films put into perspective movements that are poorly known and often frightening. I challenge clichés and try to show the complexity of the world. I believe in cinema as an instrument of knowledge and dialogue, for me making films is not to look away but to look at the world as it is with good and evil. To face the world as it is and not as we want it to be, the dignity of a filmmaker is to dare to look the truth in the face.

At the end of the day what would you answer if an "normal, ordinary man" asks you about the right wing skinhead movement and the people involved in it? Do they fit the stereotype which media spreads like "mindless bigots and thugs"?

I would say that things are often more complex than we imagine and that too often certain media have prejudices and seek above all to caricature the representation of things. There are stereotypes that have a hard skin and that the image of bigots and brainless thugs is an easy representation that may give some people a good conscience but does not always correspond to reality. What interests me is to fight against preconceived ideas and to show the complexity of our world. I am not a journalist and I do not do short-term work but long-term work to try to put the facts into perspective and also to propose a reflection. I am not a judge or a prosecutor.

After all these years will you be willing to make another documenetry some quarter of a century after the first one?

This question is very amusing because for more than a year I have been thinking that extreme right-wing movements had evolved, that in some Western countries the criminalisation and banning of certain groups had driven some of these movements underground. We can see this with the banning of the Identitaires in France and Blood and Honour in several countries.  As a result, some former Eastern Bloc nations are now playing and will play a new role in the radical right-wing extremist movement. Jasa and I had planned to make a new film twenty-five years after "White Terror"in order to address what is developing today in the extremist political movement, the new ramifications. I had articulated the title "New Aryan Millennium" and he had written with his sense of humour: "That's sounds good".

 

Mr. Schweizer, thank you for your time and honest answers! Your last words and message to our readers?

Through cinema and my movies I have always tried to raise questions that would allow the viewer to better understand the world and the society in which he lives. Are you willing to help me make a new film about the current situation?