"Someone who glows so brightly is not going to grow old," Fellini once prophesied about Irene Staub, aka Lady Shiva, one of the greatest of all Swiss divas and the subject of Gabriel Baur's documentary GLOW.
Thanks to her aura and talent, many doors opened for Irene during Zürich's exuberant years between 1968 and the late 1980s. Discovered by a pioneer of Swiss fashion, she became a model and
also pursued her dream of becoming a singer, in a legendary Zürich underground band. But Lady Shiva lived life in the fast lane; torn between the stress of success, a yearning for freedom, and self-destructive urges, she died far too young under circumstances that have been fully explained.
Using never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with prominent contemporaries, Baur brings us back to a vibrant age of boundless possibilities, in which the sky seemed the only limit for people like Lady Shiva...an age that to this day still kindles a yearning in us.
Made in 2017 and
COVID-delayed in the United States, GLOW is finally making its American premiere this June!
QUOTES FROM EUROPEAN PRESS
"In her sometimes almost overwhelmingly beautiful film Glow, the Zurich director Gabriel Baur is consistently reversing the conventional life dramaturgy of Lady Shiva. In that sense, Glow is indeed not an explanatory documentary but a kind of mirror. Here is no tragic fate being traced, but marveled at contradictions and beauty.“ -Michael Sennhauser, RADIO SRF 2
"Gabriel Baur creates not only a glowing, modern as well as human portrait of this extraordinary appearance and diva, but also an image of the time period from the late sixties till the eighties." -Rolf Breiner, CINEMAN
"Gabriel Baur has succeeded in creating an exciting, atmospherically realized portrait of the 80s icon Irene Staub. Hard cuts meet loud punk-rock tones, and original recordings from the 1970s mix with emotional interviews from the here and now. A wonderful film that lets you look into the rough past of Zurich." -Lukas Rüttimann & Carolina Lermann, BLICK AM
ABEND
"Visually powerful, Gabriel Baur tells in Glow of the life of one of the great icons of the turbulent era between 1968 and the late 1980s." -David Sarasin, TAGES-ANZEIGER
"Gabriel gives people who have supported Irene in her creative work space to tell their personal retrospection.“ -GAY.CH
"Femme fatale total." -FRIDAY
GLOW
A film by Gabriel Baur
100 minutes | color | German w/English subtitles | 2017
