Eppur si muove

Short fiction 5’
Zurich, 2021

Directing & post-production with Rafael GRAF

"January ten, sixteen ten: Galileo Galilei abolishes heaven."
— Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer and professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, demonstrated that the Earth revolves around the Sun. By challenging the authority of the Catholic Church, he was forced to recant his discoveries and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Yet, as legend has it, when he turned away from the Inquisitors he whispered the defiant words: “Eppur si muove”—“And yet it moves.”

The short film transposes this historical struggle into a fragile present: an elderly man, addressed by his nurse as Herr Galilei, must take medication to suppress dizziness and to silence the sensation of ceaseless motion he perceives in the park around him. His story becomes a metaphor for conformism — the quiet acceptance of imposed stability, even at the cost of denying the restless, shifting reality that surrounds us.

Cast: Lukas Baumann, Eva Stempel, Sonja Giesecke

Crew:
Co-written with Rafael Graf
Directing: Violetta Vigh
Camera: Rafael Graf
1st AD: Simona Volpe
Sound: Elias Bötticher
Production Design: Alexej Novikin
Runner: Lisa Jödicke, Elias Koller

Produced at the Zurich University of Arts, Bachelor Film