In the 1960s, the city's tourist board produced two extremely successful “Zürich-Filme”, listed in the 1966 annual report under ‘Our advertising programme'. Tourism films used familiar images to promote this economically vital sector throughout Switzerland. Zürcher Impressionen (Zurich impressions, 1961) and …via Zürich (1967) also show landmarks and local sites – Bahnhofstrasse, Paradeplatz, the airport, the lake, the stock exchange and the opera house – which symbolise both the tranquillity and the prosperity and modernity of Zurich.

Zürcher Impressionen was made to mark the 75th anniversary of the Zurich Tourist Office and produced by Condor-Film AG under producer Heinrich Fueter. With director Hans Trommer, screenwriters Richard Schweizer and Kurt Guggenheim, and cinematographer Otto Ritter, prominent figures from the old Swiss film industry were involved. The film depicts the course of a day in orchestral, wordless images; recurring figures, such as a wedding couple, structure the associative montage. The temporal structure and the camera movements filmed from vehicles – tram, train, ship or the ‘Polybahn’ funicular railway – recall city symphonies of the 1920s, such as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin – Sinfonie der Grossstadt (1927).

The annual reports of the Tourist Office document distribution and screening locations. In 1967, a total of eighty-six 16mm and twenty 35mm copies of ...via Zürich circulated. Most circulated in Europe, but some travelled further afield. Reviews in major daily newspapers praised both the aesthetic quality of the film and its effectiveness as an advertising tool for Zurich.

Produced a few years later, …via Zürich (1967) was directed by Alexander J. Seiler, Rob Gnant and June Kovach, who had been shaping a new aesthetic and political orientation in Swiss cinema since the early 1960s, particularly with the critical documentary film Siamo italiani (1964).

«Zürich und sein Flughafen» was the film’s working title. The Zurich Tourism Association, Swissair, and the Office for Civil Aviation commissioned a documentary to promote Zurich as an international hub of tourism, business, and culture — with Swissair as the carrier and Kloten Airport as the city’s gateway.

The film takes up the visual motifs familiar from Zürcher Impressionen but experiments with a new formal language. Abstract airport shots are followed by urban scenes, and landmarks such as the Grossmünster are juxtaposed with alienating close-ups and rapid camera movements. The images are accompanied by a multi-layered soundtrack of ambient urban noise and overheard conversation.

The film’s form, which ironises and subverts the economically driven portrayal of the city, reveals an ambivalence toward commissioned film production — a topic repeatedly addressed by Alexander J. Seiler. Bahnhofstrasse appears as a stage of consumption, the city itself as a gleaming commodity; Zurich becomes a place of transit and a surface for projection. Many filmmakers of this period struggled between the expectations of their commissioners and their own artistic and political aspirations.

A few years later, portrayals of the city of Zurich emerged that stood in stark contrast to the image conveyed in these tourism films. As in other European cities, young people rebelled in 1968 and again in 1980 against bourgeois narrow-mindedness. Protesting the established institutions such as the opera and the museums shown in Zürcher Impressionen and …via Zürich, they demanded more funding and space for new cultural forms and self-managed initiatives. During those years, graphic design, fashion and music burst with innovative energy, fuelled in part by the discontent of young people. Youth revolts gave rise to creative experiments such as the Wohlgroth cultural centre, one of Switzerland's largest squats.

It was in this environment that the video Zureich was created in 1992. Its title echoes the huge lettering on the squatted building, visible from the tracks at Zurich’s main station – a pun on the German word reich (“rich”).  Using the simplest of means, the video tours the city, contrasting what is cherished with what is despised. The latter includes Shopville, Bahnhofstrasse and the pompous new stock-exchange building, symbols of heartless commercialism and predatory capitalism. In contrast, Zureich presents various squats, street-level political resistance and the cultural achievements of the squatters' movement. The video exemplifies how the youth movement used the new medium of video to articulate its criticism and demands, document itself and engage in socio-political discourse.

Further historical Swiss tourism films can be found on the Cinémathèque suisse website. Felix Aeppli wrote an article on Zurich tourism films for the publication Nützliche Filme: Zürcher Stadt-, Land-, Filmgeschichten, which can be found online on Repérages – Journal of the Cinémathèque suisse.