Verhaag, Bertram. Andeer ist anders. [There’s something different about Andeer] Munich: DENKmal-Film, 2005. 45 min.
For Martin Bienerth, the Alps, the cows, and the cheese he produces are his life. He and his wife are graduate agrarian engineers. Martin is also a journalist and photographer. Since turning twenty, he has spent every summer as an Alpine herdsman and dairyman. He runs a small organic cheese dairy in Andeer in the Swiss canton of Graubünden with his wife, and both are two of Switzerland’s last remaining master cheese makers. For Martin, summer in the Alps was more than just a job, it was a culture, a way to be close to life as well as death. His commitment to the animals, to nature and to the mountain farmers’ way of life did not stop at the edge of the pasture. The cheese dairy business is a calculated step to prevent the milk, and with it the work and capital, flowing down to the lowlands—which would mean yet another element of life in the mountains disappearing. (Source: Adapted and translated from the German on the DENKmal-Film website).
© 2005 DENKmal-Film. Film still used with permission.
- Grasseni, Cristina. "Re-inventing food: Alpine cheese in the age of global heritage." Anthropology of food 8 (2011). url: http://aof.revues.org/6819.
- Orland, Barbara. "Alpine Milk: Dairy Farming as a Pre-modern Strategy of Land Use." Environment and History 10, no. 3 (2004): 327–64. doi:10.3197/0967340041794286.
