PIET BAUMGARTNER
PIET BAUMGARTNER
©Fabienne Wild
Piet Baumgartner is a visual artist and director. He works transdisciplinarily in film, visual arts and theatre. He worked as a journalist before completing an MA in film directing at the Zurich University of the Arts and later the "Drehbuchwerkstatt München". This was followed by training with Andrej Wajda in Warsaw and assistant role with Frank Castorf and Rene Pollesch at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. Piet Baumgartner works both independently and collectively with Rio Wolta and has received numerous international awards. He lives in Zurich and lectures at the F+F School of Art and Design.
Piet Baumgartner lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland
Exhibitions
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You can find Piet Baumgartner’s portfolio here:
Film Festival Max Ophülst — Winner: Best Director and Best Screenplay
Winner of prize: Best Director and Best Screenplay with the film Bagger Drama
2025
The jury gave the following reasons for the award for ‘Best Director’:
“Tell us about the tenderness of our parents. Tell us about the longing of their children. Tell us about the pain of the bereaved and the day of rejection. Synchronously, but never in unison, the three main characters of this mature and skilfully directed film move from loss to expectation to fulfilment. It tells of family and family business and of a harsh reality check: that love fades, that money can be a weapon and that grief will not bind us forever...
The director skilfully fans out the triad of son, father and mother in surprising shots and precise acting. Painfully intimate, but never revealing, she asks her characters to perform a ballet - a tactful choreography. The director calmly tells of hurtful secrets and finds great poetry even in the ordinariness of a medium-sized company. Hum hum hum hum.”
The jury gave the following reasons for awarding the film ‘Best Screenplay’:
“A village, a company and a family live by rules that are shaken by an accident. This is the fragile initial situation we are immersed in. One thing is certain: a return to the old order is no longer possible. We experience how the script shakes up and reorganises the once solid ground - just like an excavator digging deep.”
©Max Kullmann
San Sebastian Film Festival — Winner: New Directors Award
Movie Premiere — Bagger Drama
Movie directed by Piet Baumgartner
In Swiss cinemas from 1 May 2025.
A family finds it difficult to talk about feelings, love or intimacy. The family business demands their full attention: renting out excavators, selling, repairing. Everyone has to pitch in. When the daughter has a fatal accident, the family stops functioning. The son would rather go to the USA than take over the company. The father takes a liking to the new choirmaster and the mother suddenly finds herself alone. A new home film with searching people and dancing machines.
Filmstill. Courtesy of the artist
Theatre — EWS Der einzige Politthriller der Schweiz
2022—2023
Eveline says yes. Switzerland has never seen this before. Blocher is out, the election divides her party and Switzerland.
At the Neumarkt theatre, extended twice, everything completely sold out.
Eveline Widmer - Schlumpf's election to the Federal Council made political history 15 years ago. She, who saw herself as a solution-oriented politician, was overnight at the centre of Switzerland's biggest - perhaps only - political thriller.
Director Piet Baumgartner, together with David Attenberger, Melina Pyschny, Lara Stoll and a choir of Swiss women, devotes himself to women in power and Swiss political culture. A concordant choreography to the beat of the Swiss beat. Strange, Helvetic, poetic.
Place: Neumarkt Theatre / Director: Piet Baumgartner / Dramaturgy: Julia Reichert / Costume Design: Delia Keller / Stage Design: Anna WohlgemuthThe play won the Swiss Theatre Production 2022.
“Julia Reichert, Piet Baumgartner and their ensemble have really created a hot property with EWS – Der einzige Politthriller der Schweiz. The play is side-splittingly funny when the clones of Eveline scurry around the stage, precise down to the last crease of their grey two-pieces and changing pace dynamically. It is both quirky and unique, just like the episode involving Federal Councillor Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf. At the same time, it offers a small but concentrated lesson in Swiss political history and a reminder that the machinations of Swiss politics actually have more scope for surprises than people like to claim.”
Nicolette Kretz, jury member
©Philip Frowein
Installation — Bittersweet Tea Symphony
Installation by Piet Baumgartner and Rio Wolta
2020–22
Tour through Wasserkirche, Theater Neumarkt, Seebad Enge and Helmhaus in Zurich, and Neubad Luzern, Switzerland
A sound and art installation with 200 tea kettles. It gets loud from 90 degrees Celsius: The tea kettles vibrate, the basses rumble, the water church fills with steam until the kettles finally switch off, it ‘clicks’ 100 times through the room and the sea of sound slowly subsides again. The tea kettles are electrically switched, the choreographies differ in the amount of water, delayed boiling times, temperature stages and steam.
©Stefan Tschumi
Documentary - The Driven Ones
2023
A long-term cinema documentary about HSG students. In cinemas in autumn 2023.
They could be the next CEOs of this world: Five students are starting the Master's programme at the University of St. Gallen, which is considered the best in the world (No1 since 2013, Financial Times). They all have a clear goal: to make a career and help shape our society. They will soon be able to wield a lot of power. In return, they are prepared to do without - and perhaps achieve something much greater.
This cinema documentary follows its protagonists over seven years, during perhaps the most exciting phase of their lives: during their studies and the first years of their careers. They come under pressure, take on responsibility, fall in love, ask questions and sometimes question everything.
With ARD, SRF, RTS / Directed by Piet Baumgartner / Camera by Stefan Dux / Produced by Catpics
All images are film stills from the movie. Courtesy of Piet Baumgartner.
Video - Drones Over All (A Tribute to Pipilotti Rist)
2018—2019
A video work with 15 drones and 1 baseball bat.
For Jungkunst Winterthur, Piet Baumgartner shot and updated an homage to Pipilotti Rist's Ever Is Overall (1997). He replaced the cars with drones, which today seem as untouchable and promise freedom as the status symbol car used to.
The video is shot in the same colours, in the same street and with the same costume.
Exhibition: Jungkunst Winterthur / Concept: Piet Baumgartner / Music: Rio Wolta /
Supported by Volkart Foundation
All images are film stills from the video. Curtosy of Piet Baumgartner.
Performance — Showroom
2018
A performance with 5000 tennis balls, 10 tennis ball machines, 4 performers, 3 musicians and 1 dog.
“The machine is lonely.” - Eva Hediger, Tages-Anzeiger
“A world that invites you to immerse yourself, enjoy, smile and marvel.” - Nadine Landert, Radio 1
“I don't know how they do it. But when Zurich musician Rio Wolta and Bernese filmmaker Piet Baumgartner work together, the result is something dreamlike.” - Miriam Lenz, Rockette
Venue: Gessnerallee Zurich / Concept: Piet Baumgartner / Rio Wolta
©Katinka Kocher
Performance — Choreographies
2015 — ongoing
Video installation with 3 cranes, 2 excavators, 5 robotic lawnmowers, 3 lifting platforms and 12 sheep.
“In the performative video installation, compiled for the exhibition in Paris, Piet Baumgartner shows choreographies for machines that have been created over the years on three monitors. When construction cranes perform a sequence of movements in unison, excavators explore the limits of their physical possibilities and measure the pit with their bodies in dance, when mowing robots perform visual spatial interventions in the ensemble and their motor skills are juxtaposed with those of sheep, a subtle humour about a world in which industrial machinery has overflowed into artificial intelligence is revealed. The personification of the machines, which is made possible by the artifice of choreography, is also reflected in the presentation. Three monitors show the interwoven video works as a unit. They stand in the room like sculptural objects, like communicating vessels that tell a story about the aesthetics of change. The machines are no longer merely usable devices. They become actors in a theatrical performance in the setting of contemporary art.” - Judith Pichlmüller, curator
Exhibitions: Cité des Arts, Paris, Haus zur Ameise, St. Gallen, and Gessnerallee, Zurich / Concept: Rio Wolta / Piet Baumgartner
All images are film stills from the video. Courtesy of Piet Baumgartner.