L'univers de Germaine is a three-part video project by Muda Mathis, Sus Zwick and Hipp Mathis. Its focus is directed on the extensively-travelled 82-year old Basel local Germaine Winterberg – an extraordinary woman. Her accounts of her travels continue the tradition of the Swiss pioneers Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Ella Maillard and Alice Boner.

Germaine Winterberg recounts her memories directly into the camera. In a series of episodes she reports on her life as a non-conformist, as a self-named researcher and ethnographer, mother and wife, lecturer on textile arts from beyond Europe and boutique owner, and about herself as a curious humanitarian.

The video work from the Mathis Zwick Mathis artistic team combines historic material and oral tradition, performative action and musical composition to create a complex view of a dazzling personality. Alongside the episodic memoirs a filmic portrait emerges and Germaine Winterberg is framed as a dancer within a large projection considering the subject of the trance. The full account of Winterberg’s biography is being published as an audio book.