“The sixteen-year-old, who breaks out of his family on his birthday and crashes his father’s car, is a figure of Markus Imhoof’s constant concern with the figure of the father, be it physically or personified in the figures of the organized Society, the prescriptive state, the dictating group.
For the generation that engineered the revolt in 1969, “Happy Birthay” is still enlightening, among other films on the subject. And with some astonishment you can perceive – for example, in the way the students in the gymnastics set in trot, as the students are twirled at the Kneiptisch – that Markus Imhoof found early the right situations, the coherent images that reveal the rituals of power for this uprising against the well-ordered life,
– Martin Schlappner, NZZ 1988
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Language: OV Swiss-German
Actors
Lukas Strebel, Cinematographer
Born 1951 in Mägenwil. As a 16-year-old leading actor in Markus Imhoof’s film “Happy Birthday”, attended photo class of the Zurich School of Applied Arts, followed by two years as a lecturer in photography at the British Bath Academy of Art. Between 1978 and 1984 he directed a number of documentaries and short films as a director. Several awards for commercial and industrial films. Lives in London since 1998.
FILMOGRAPHY (selection)
Case of Evil, Graham Theakston, 2001
Three Guesses, Richard Burridge, 2001
Epsteins Nacht, Urs Egger, 2001
The Bombmaker, Graham Theakston, 2000
Seeing Red, Graham Theakston, 1999
Opern Ball, Urs Egger, 1998,
Fire in Paradise, Markus Imhoof, 1997
Die Halbstarken, Urs Egger, 1996
Charleys Tante, Sönke Wortmann, 1996
Kinder der Landstrasse, Urs Egger, 1992
All Out, Thomas Koerfer, 1990
The Mountain, Markus Imhoof, 1990
Filou, Samir, 1988
Happy Birthday, Markus Imhoof, 1967
as leading actor