Stefan Schwietert was born in Esslingen on January 29 1961 and grew up in the Swiss town of Therwil. After early experiences with video in the early 1980s, he worked as an assistant director in Brazil and later became a guest student at the California Art Institute. He then moved to Berlin, where he studied at the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie from 1984 to 1990. His graduation film Sprung aus den Wolken premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival.
He founded his production company Neapel Film and went on to direct numerous documentaries for film and television, with a focus on music and social change. His first feature Der Schatten ist lang was followed by the internationally acclaimed A Tickle in the Heart, a documentary about the Jewish Klezmer trio the Epstein Brothers. The film received several awards, including the Artur Brauner Preis, the documentary award at the Chicago Film Festival and the Bavarian Film Award.
Schwietert continued this path with Im Warteraum Gottes, a documentary on Holocaust survivors living in Florida. He then completed a series of films exploring artists, instruments and musical traditions, including El Acordeón del Diablo, Voyage Oriental, Liebeslieder, Das Alphorn and Accordion Tribe.
His documentary Heimatklänge examined the human voice as a universal instrument and won multiple accolades, among them the Swiss Film Award. The same year he portrayed the Vienna Art Orchestra in Big Band Poesie.
After Balkan Melodie, Schwietert accompanied musician and activist Bill Drummond for Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared. This documentary explores the idea of a world that must reinvent music from scratch and continues Schwietert’s long standing interest in the relationship between sound, culture and collective expression.
