GAMBLING, GODS and LSD

DO NOT MISS THIS MOVIE!!!
Ed, Carlos, Carmen, Warren, Sobey, and myself among others went to see it as part of the Vanc. Int'l Film Fest. It was amazing. 3 hours long, absolutely magical... Well worth the $10!
(no LSD required for viewing, better to watch sober, at least the 1st time!)

Some groups are forming to go on Monday and/or Wednesday.
Come early to line up together or reserve seats together.
Pacific Cinemateque - April 18th til 24th @ 7:30pm - NO SHOW ON TUESDAY

All screenings at Pacific Cinémathèque 1131 Howe Street, Vancouver (between Helmcken & Davie). Tickets go on sale at the theatre box office 30 minutes before the first show of the evening.
Advance tickets are available online - click on desired date, surcharge applies.

Adult - $7.50 or Student/Senior - $6.00
*Annual Pacific Cinémathèque membership is required: $3.

~~~~~~~~~~~
"The film addresses a part of the psyche that everyone has. It's the musical, painterly, you could even say  hallucinogenic sensibility. It relates to the realm of the unconscious and of dreams: a kind of state that involves the intellect but also bypasses the intellect. The film is a transmission of experience, at times beyond language and concepts, letting the situations speak for themselves. This has very much to do with how we use our senses, how we experience a piece of music, a situation, or an image--the combination of different sense perceptions."--Peter Mettler

http://www.viff.org/viff02/filmguide/filmnote.php?FCode=GAMBL
Official site: http://www.gambling-gods-and-lsd.ch
See Official Press Release below 

Back to http://escape.to/burningman

A filmmaker’s inquiry into transcendence becomes a three-hour trip across countries, connecting people over culture and time. From Toronto, the place of his childhood, Peter Mettler sets out on a journey that includes evangelismat the airport strip, demolition in Las Vegas, chemistry and street life in the model society of Switzerland, and the coexistence of technology and divinity in contemporary India.
Mettler blends documentary observation with lyrical camera work, location sound with aural sculpture. The result is an audio-visual composition whose movements challenge our preconceptions, evoking in us the wonder and awe of our daily lives. A lucid and personal portrait of our times, Gambling, Gods and LSD may change the way you look at the world.
http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/data/production/prod_845.asp?lang=en&c=1
GAMBLING, GODS and LSD:
Winner of National Film Board Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Vancouver International Film Festival
The National Film Board of Canada is proud to announce that Gambling, Gods and LSD, director Peter Mettler’s epic inquiry into the human pursuit of transcendence, has won the NFB prize for Best Documentary Feature at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
http://www.nfb.ca/e/press.releases/02-83.html
A cloud of debris sucks out of the air as the ruined shards of a collapsed building hover up and reassemble themselves like a jagged jigsaw. This reverse-view of a demolished hotel is just one of the indelible images of Peter Mettler's (Picture of Light, VIFF 94) latest film. As a child growing up in Toronto, Mettler ran away from home. Coming to a river, he was suddenly flushed with a profound awareness of how this
 ribbon of water connected him to the infinitely varied world outside his childhood boundaries. This memory serves as a touchstone for a filmmaker's search for meaning in the marginal and the monumental, from evangelism to gambling, from sexual and chemical experiments to the coexistence of technology and the divine. Blending documentary observation with lyrical cinematography and expressive sound design,
Gambling, Gods and LSD is an epic inquiry into the human pursuit of transcendence around the world, lucidly wrought amidst a maelstrom of luck, destiny, faith, and expanded perceptions. -- Elan Mastai
(Found this review online by a McGill Tribune writer - thought it was well written. squish)
Gambling, Gods and LSD openseyes & minds
"When we close our eyes, we see the God within us."
By Scott Medvin, McGill Tribune

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a cinematic exploration of the things that people search for to make themselves whole, whether it be religion, drugs, hedonism or the road to recovery. Established independent director Peter Mettler talks to real people about their lives and the way they live them and examines a number of profound themes: expanding perception, the craving for security and the joy that can be found in life. He begins in his hometown of Toronto and sets out to the other side of the world, stopping in the American Southwest, Switzerland and India. He meets an astounding array of people on his journey, people whom the viewer get to know and feel for, whatever their eclectic situation may be.

Mettler clarified, "This film is… about the breaking down of categories, of prejudices. Ultimately the film is about the people who watch it." Anyone who sees this film will probably feel something different and take from it different aspects to infuse into their own life.
 
This is not a film about drugs, or a film to see while on drugs. This is a movie that shows what drugs, as well as a number of other reality-changing lifestyles and beliefs, can do for a person. I myself have always argued that a person can gain an intimate knowledge of himself through the use of psychedelically sacramental drugs such as LSD, and that doing these psychedelic drugs can change a person forever.

Mettler takes this to another level to show how powerful religion can be. The film's second main scene is of a revival at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Church.  As rock music plays, an older woman twirls around madly, looking like a barefoot hippie girl dancing at a Grateful Dead concert. People lend their voices to the praise, and their closeness to God causes them to fall to the ground. A woman steps before the crowd and describes her hallucinatory visions of a warrior Jesus; hands are laid upon her and she falls to the floor in a heap of worship.
 
People are as happy and high as from a mighty drug: this drug is called faith and love and truth, a drug more powerful than PCP and more intense than DMT. With footage of an airplane streaking across the sky, Mettler leaves Toronto and ingrains a  powerful image into the viewer: leaving one perception to enter another. This effect is repeated as the film veers from one reality to another.
 
In the American Southwest, red-rock canyons and tumbleweeds are portrayed in a time-lapse that gives the feeling of sped-up evolution happening before your eyes. The camera sits in a car that flies around the curvy mountain roads, hurtling the viewer around corners at breakneck speed before stopping to show a valley, mountains in the background, a storm ever-so-slowly rolling in over the horizon. This scene is less abstract than the first nature scene: the psychedelic glimmer has disappeared, to be replaced by the artificial glow of Las Vegas' lights.
 
Most of the Vegas footage is shown as if it was shot from one of the city's many million security cameras. The "eye-in-the-sky" sees all, and shows the throngs of people that flock to Sin City in search of pleasure. An interview with a man who studies and practices erotic electro-stimulation reveals that "the human being is a  pleasure seeking machine that always wants to be right," a theme which is touched upon at various points in the film.
 
Whether discussing the intricacies of deep heroin addiction or interviewing Albert  Hoffman, the revered chemist who accidentally discovered LSD in Switzerland almost 60 years ago, Mettler refuses to pass judgement on the lifestyles and choices of his subjects. He opts instead to present the story unbiased, allowing the viewer to make judgements on an individual basis.
 
And everyone who sees this movie will take something away from it. This is a beautiful movie, not only visually, but thematically, and in the way in which Mettler approaches his project. Some moments are heart-wrenching, while others bring out a smile or a laugh. Regardless of your emotional response, this movie will appeal to your intellect, to the part of you that is always searching, always trying to transcend
itself.
 
Whatever you do to make yourself high, be it dancing till exhaustion amidst the  flashing lights of a rave, experimenting with drugs trying to open the "Doors of  Perception" or praying to whichever higher spirit you invoke, Gamblers, Gods and LSD will show you that your search is not futile, and that there are many ways to get high. I strongly recommend this movie to everyone. Like ingesting Christ in Communion or dropping that first hit of LSD, this movie may change the very essence of your being.
http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/297746.html

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

GAMBLING, GODS AND LSD  -  a film by Peter Mettler 

CH / CDN 2002, 35 mm, 180 min, 5003 m, 1:1.66, Dolby Digital DTS, English / Swiss German, e / g 

INTERNATIONAL SALES 

Alliance Atlantis
121 Bloor St. East , Suite 1500
Toronto, M4W 3M5, Canada
T +1-416-967-1174 / F +1-416-960-0971
info@allianceatlantis.com

”I experience the world only through my senses. I describe the material world to which our bodies belong as a transmitter, because all signals come from there to our antennae – ears, eyes, our senses. Here the signals are received and transformed into sight, sound, music. 

There is one great transmitter: the cosmos, the entire material world… and there are an endless number of receivers, individuals, every single human being.”

 Albert Hofmann

 SYNOPSIS

A filmmaker’s inquiry into transcendence becomes a three-hour trip across countries and cultures,

interconnecting people, places and times. From Toronto, the scene of his childhood, Peter Mettler sets out on a journey that includes evangelism at the airport strip, demolition in Las Vegas, tracings in the Nevada desert, chemistry and street life in Switzerland, and the coexistence of technology and divinity in contemporary India. Everywhere along the way, the same themes are to be found: thrill-seeking, luck, destiny, belief, expanding perception, the craving for security in an uncertain world. Fact joins with fantasy; the search for meaning and the search for ecstasy begin to merge.

 Mettler blends documentary observation with lyrical camerawork, location sound with aural sculpture. The result is an audio-visual composition whose movements challenge our preconceptions, evoking in us the wonder and awe of our daily existence. It is a mosaic of moments where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Gambling, Gods and LSD invites the viewer to actively participate in the making of meaning, so that the central theme of the film and the experience of watching it become one and the same. 

A visionary, intuitive journey. A lucid and personal portrait of our times.

 Gambling, Gods and LSD may change the way you look at the world. 

 PRODUCTION NOTES 

Gambling, Gods and LSD – GGLSD for short – is Peter Mettler’s 8th film and follows work made in many genres: the shorts Lancalot Freely (1980) and Gregory (1981), the experimental films

Scissere (1982) and Eastern Avenue (1985), the fiction features The Top of His Head (1989) and Tectonic Plates (1992) and the documentaries Picture of Light (1994) and Balifilm (1997).

 The original idea for GGLSD surfaced in 1988, but it wasn’t until Picture of Light was completed in 1994 that Mettler was able to devote himself fully to the project. From the beginning, the process of making the film was structured as a voyage of discovery. Mettler explains: "It was important for this

project not to depend on a script or a preconceived shooting plan. It was a more open and intuitive way of working. Such a process still requires decisions and choices, but they were made in response to the apparently random flow of events and people who crossed my path.” 

Working alone or with a small crew, Mettler shot film and video footage in Canada, the USA, Switzerland and India (see list of appearances). Four themes set the conceptual guidelines for

shooting: the desire to transcend; the denial of death; the illusion of safety; our relationship to nature. These themes played a guiding role in selecting subjects for the film, as well as suggesting how to

respond to and film the subjects. The encounters themselves created the journey’s own logic. As Mettler says: "I wanted to let one thing lead to the next, allowing the film to make itself – so that its structure might reflect the logic of life’s unfolding.” 

Mettler’s travels for the film occurred intermittently between late 1997 and early 1999. He began the editing process in 1998 in a rambling wooden farmhouse in the Swiss canton of Appenzell, loaned to the production by the Schlesinger Foundation as a year-long artist-in-residence grant. The following year Mettler moved his digital editing system into an abandoned hotel in nearby St. Anton, which he and a group of fellow artists had turned into a collective working residence. 

In a first, rough editing stage, Mettler and his co-editor Roland Schlimme created a 55-hour assembly culled from a larger quantity of original material. Mettler explains: "Nothing was ever shot twice, there were no re-takes or multiple camera angles, so the 55 hours contained a multitude of different scenes and characters. I put the material together chronologically and tried to crystallize scenes and sequences according to what the material itself suggested. The challenge was to create a structure and a story while preserving the chronological order of events without imposing too much from outside. It was important to let the material breathe.”

 Right from the start, sound design played an important role in structuring the film. Sound influenced the picture editing choices as much as the picture would call for a certain sound, and these had to blend with the spoken word of the people interviewed. Mettler worked with collaborators to develop individual sound elements as accompaniment or counterpoint to specific contexts within the emerging film. Original aural elements were created by noted Swiss sound designer Peter Bräker, musician Fred Frith and DJ Dimitri de Perrot.

The soundtrack also merges sounds and music recorded on location, ranging from Las Vegas casino ambience through techno halls to Indian religious ceremonies. It also uses pre-recorded music by various artists, including Jim O’Rourke, Henryk Gorecki, Tony Coe, Knut and Silvy, Christian Fennesz and others (for a full list, see music credits).  

As a Swiss-Canadian co-venture the film could partake of the expertise available in both countries throughout all stages of the production. Financing also occurred on an international basis. The film’s first and critical supporter was the late Andreas Züst, best known to Mettler fans as a principal

character in Picture of Light. Further funding came from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (EDI), the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR Idée Suisse), ARTE, the city and canton of Zurich and Telefilm Canada. Additional support was received from a number of foundations and arts organizations in both countries, and in the form of goodwill from many associated participants. 

Gambling, Gods and LSD was co-produced by Cornelia Seitler of maximage GmbH, Zurich, and Alexandra Rockingham Gill and Ingrid Veninger of Grimthorpe Film Inc., Toronto.

 AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER METTLER 

You have worked in all genres, from fiction to documentary and experimental and essay film. How would you define this new film?

 I wouldn’t call it any of those things. Those labels suggest certain pre-formed expectations that this film does not adhere to. We need better names for things. Names which relate the nuances of a thing. A tree is not just a tree. I like the idea of ‘white’ films - like the white light you get when combining the colors of the spectrum.

 This film is, in part, about the breaking down of categories, or prejudices. GGLSD invites the viewer to go on a journey, to actively participate in the making of meaning and the opening of the senses. It isn’t aimed at a specific category of viewer. It will appeal to anyone who can find something of their own sensibility in it, whether they relate to the journey itself, the characters encountered along the way, the notions of belief and spirituality, or simply the aesthetic potential of image and sound.

 Is Gambling, Gods and LSD intended to work on the intellect, or the senses, or both? 

The film addresses a part of the psyche that everyone has. It’s the musical, painterly, you could even say hallucinogenic sensibility. It relates to the realm of the unconscious and of dreams: a kind of state that involves the intellect but also bypasses the intellect. The film is a transmission of experience, at times beyond language and concepts, letting the situations speak for themselves. This has very much to do with how we use our senses, how we experience a piece of music, a situation, or an image - the combination of different sense perceptions.

 In the film Albert Hofman, the inventor of LSD, talks about the kind of perception we have as children, and later lose. Is the film an attempt to try to restore that sense of wonder, as Hofman describes it? 

Yes, to an extent, I did try to invoke the non-judgmental openness of the way a child sometimes sees. I try to invite the viewers to approach the film with this openness and let them feel free to interpret for themselves.  

The meaning of the film is ultimately generated by the individual viewer?

 Ultimately, the film is about the people who watch it. Again, the experience of watching the film reflects the central idea of what the film is ‘about’: the way in which we make things meaningful. Watching the film is an active experience in the quest for meaning, in acknowledging the fragility of our belief systems, in our ongoing pursuits of happiness – or whatever you’d like to call it. Within this context, the film comes across a wide range of situations such as addiction, the manifestation of God, the departure of loved ones, the attempt to perfect our environment through technological or scientific intervention, mass ecstatic gatherings in churches, raves, implosions, poodle races or guru visitations etc. 

Poodle Races?

 Yes, the film addresses not only spectacular situations, but also the banality of the everyday. I think what I learned most in making this film was how to see the potential, or similar themes, in anything I would look at. And how anything I could look at, somehow contains the strains of everything seen before.

 And the experience of making the film?

My experience of shooting the film was a mix of observation and participation, of research and openness, of following encounters while developing an instinct of when to run the camera.

During editing the experience of going on that journey was repeated. Just as events unfolded with their own particular chaotic logic while I was travelling, the film also had to grow out of this same inner logic. I could say that in a sense the film made itself, and I acted only as a medium. This was one of my

strictest guidelines. Another was that the film could only be edited in chronological order. The editing

responds to what happens, instead of trying to impose a structure on the material from the outside. You could say: the flow dictates the form.

 Gambling, Gods and LSD has been called an "audio-visual composition”. What role did music or musical structures play in the making of the film?

 Picture and sound were edited simultaneously, and they fed off and stimulated one another. The music in the film is a mix of real environmental sounds, pre-recorded music, and original compositions that were developed specifically for the film. While you are watching the film, you’re not always sure what is what. This heightens the perception of sound and the image to which it is linked, which generally stimulates the senses to go deeper. The musical structures complement the other modes within the film: storytelling, documentation and fantasy.

 Filmmaking as a kind of composing?

 I definitely think the camera is like a musical instrument: you tune yourself according to the subjects you want to capture. But it’s important that your own experience is transmitted through the instrument you’re recording with. I think that allowing yourself to perceive and experience the world on the musical instrument level – meaning not just sound and image but also thematically – takes you into another dimension of the language of cinema.

 Interview by Marcy Goldberg

 SYNAESTHETIC WORLDS

by Peter Weber

 a) Teledivinitry: Fernschmeckerei

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a three-hour contemporary dream. The film starts at the bubbling spring of his current of images; we see a whirlpool of phantoms and figures, gods and ghosts. Teledivinitry – Fernschmeckerei: this is what Mettler calls his technique of generating flickering visual noise by endlessly superimposing images and sounds until everything blends into a single, quivering whole. This spring is the source of all that follows. From the top floor of the airport hotel in Toronto that once stirred his childhood fantasies, he weaves a fabric of flights, thoughts, waterways and energy lines he explores in the course of his travels. The camera is the sensor and the divining rod; always receptive to the unexpected, it follows invisible currents, drifting on stage and backstage, past the great backdrops of the world to eavesdrop on the miracles of daily life and rediscover wonder.

 b) Cross section: "I follow water everywhere”

The Telediviner moves from Toronto through the American desert to the mightiest image spring of all, the Las Vegas seduction machine, which magnetically attracts hordes of will-o’-the-wisps and garish dried flowers. Mettler is all ears in the crackling air, acquiring access to control rooms and probing the giant synthesizers from every conceivable angle. From this desert metropolis his flight path takes him to the moated castle, Switzerland. The country of the Alps, a jagged, land-locked island sitting in an ocean of fog, becomes the link between America and Asia. Landing, he plunges through the prefabricated images of Arcadian landscapes and consummate order, draws his lines through the elements and shows a radically new heart of Switzerland. A roaring mountain stream is suddenly rivaled by the beat of a bass, spills over into repetitive electronic music, foam and frenzied dancing masses. From the rocks and ice of the high Alps, we nosedive into the underground nerve center of a techno-park where utopias come spewing out of laser beams. Against the idyllic backdrop of the Alps, an Indian film crew shoots a story that will enchant millions of spectators in Asia: the image spring of Switzerland bonds with the complex image spring of India where ancient mythologies and the digital future collide, bubbling pictures swelling into a flowing current that comes full circle until spring and delta become one. Spectators, following Mettler half way around the globe, travel through an ever-changing present. How did this exquisite interplay emerge? The answer lies in the art of flying and advanced chemistry.

 c) At the digital editing console 

After almost two years on the road, Mettler retired to the hilly countryside of Appenzell, where he started editing, first in a farmhouse, later in an abandoned hotel. Day and night, in shifts and with different teams, the masses of footage were reviewed, emerging versions repeatedly screened and discussed by small circles of friends: filmmakers, artists, musicians and writers. Having traveled through the rolling foothills of the Alps, visitors would come upon the filmmaker and his team holed up in a kind of cockpit, through which one could gaze at different continents. At the editing machine I felt as if I were in an airfreight carrier looking at a multitude of intricate control processes. In earlier versions, there were always pictures of the interior of control towers at airports. It seems to me that filmmakers are social polyrhythmists, who keep thousands of soups simmering at once, thousands of pies suspended in

mid-air. They fly in groups, survey flight movements, are pilots and ground crew in one.   

d) Condensation, Saturation, Crystallization: "Things were allowed to show themselves...”

I had the opportunity to look over Mettler’s shoulder several times while he was editing. He took note of my rather inexpert suggestions as guidelines for further pursuits and I noticed that he was suspicious of hasty solutions. Short-lived effects would have been easy to produce, but Mettler was looking for the secret connections that were hidden in his material; he was looking for more lasting rhythms. Sound and picture were processed together from the start as if to produce liquids that could constantly be poured back and forth until the exact mix was achieved. Music was the solvent that turned the imagery into a flowing river. When a passage on Zurich was being edited, Mettler asked me (I live in Zurich) what music I’d been listening to recently. He took sequences from my favorite tune, poured them into his pictures and thus added impetus to the cutting. Later these sequences were deleted again, leaving only a shadow of the rhythm behind in the images. A soundtrack was then recorded with live musicians. With such complex and elaborate condensation of movement, strands kept falling by the wayside, others melted together. After almost three years, a version had crystallized which seemed buoyed by the reflection of everything that had been left out.

 e) Alchemy of the Present

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a highly potent musical feat. The Telediviner demonstrates how – after the breakdown of ideological systems – the world on this side of fixed ideas and overused pictures must be linked synaesthetically, associatively and in analogies, in order to follow the emerging lines of meaning. Imperceptibly, almost organically, documentary and inner images blend with musical movement to form a flowing stream in which the present shimmers through in constantly changing realities. The synaesthetic fusions of sound and image are the ordering drive of Mettler’s universe. Empires are created between these spheres that keep us breathless as we accompany his intoxicating journeys. 

 APPEARANCES IN THE FILM

 The Airport Strip, Toronto, Canada
Killarney Provincial Park
A Walk, Talk and Cigar with John Paul Young
Toronto Air Traffic Control Tower
Members of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Church

 Monument Valley, Southwestern USA
Death Valley, Monument Valley, Bloodless Valley
Police Units of Cortez, Colorado
Titan II Missile Site, Sahuarita, Arizona
Dant'e Amore of Paradise Electro Stimulations
Harrah's Casino Las Vegas, Security Department
Eva Steil
Justine Bellinsky, The Violin Lady
The Aladdin Hotel
The News Crews and Implosion Spectators of Las Vegas
Jose Alves and Friends at Baca Grande
The Tashi Gomang Stupa

The Helvetian Glacis, Switzerland
Swiss Miniature
Herr J. Bänninger at Splugen Pass
Mountain Passes of Nufenen, Albula, Grimsel and Furka
Rosenlaui Gorge
Street Parade, Zürich
Christoph Richter, ETH Biochemistry Lab, Zürich
Poodle Racers of Entlisberg, Zürich
Christine Koch and Roger Greminger
Albert Hofmann
Rani Mukherje and Govinda filming 'Hadh Kardi Aapne' in Interlaken
 

The Vijayanagara Empire, Southern India
The Community at Kodanda Rama Temple, Hampi
Brahmins celebrating Arattu at the Trivundrum Beach
Ajith Kumar and Jairo, Firedance
Pilgrims at Dharmasthala
Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma) embracing her Visitors
Stephen Arulraj at Tata Consultancy Services, Chennai
Bhavnagar Rickshaw Drivers
The Rooftop of Milan Hotel, Bombay
The Bombay Laughing Club
The Boatman
The Boy on the Shore

 ORIGINAL MUSIC BY
Fred Frith, Peter Bräker and Dimitri de Perrot

also featuring pieces by:

 Jim O'Rourke
CEDE from the album "Terminal Pharmacy"

CHICAGO II from the album "Remove the Need"

LIFE GOES OFF from the album "Insignificance"

 by Third Eye Foundation

AN EVEN HARDER SHADE OF DARK

NO DOVE NO COVENANT from the album "You Guys Kill Me"

 by Christian Fennesz

HOTEL PARAL.LEL from the album "Hotel Paral.lel"

AFTERNOON TEA RECORDED AT THE BIG JESUS BURGER, SYDNEY
with Keith Rowe, Pimmon, Oren Ambarchi, Peter Rehberg

 

by Knut&Silvy

ONE NOTE EPINEMA

DEEP BREATH from the album "Visit"

 by Tony Coe

TONY'S BASEMENT  from the album "Sax With Sex"

 by Henryk Gorecki

SYMPHONY NO. 3, OP. 36 performed by Zofia Kilanowicz

HNH International Ltd. Polish NRSO, Antoni Wit conducting

 by Martin Schütz and Roots and Wires

THE BACKGROUND IS THE FOREGROUND THEN DELIRIUM from the album "Roots and Wires"

performed by Jeremy Sinnott + Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Worship Band

WE WANT TO SEE JESUS LIFTED HIGH

NEW SONG ARISIN'

SON OF MAN APPEARS from the album "Catch The Fire 4”

 PARTICIPATION IN THE MAKING OF THE FILM

 Writing, Directing, Cinematography: Peter Mettler
Editing:
Peter Mettler, Roland Schlimme
Sound Composition:
Peter Mettler, Peter Bräker
Research:
Gavin Connor, Alison Rose, Stina Werenfels
Coordination:
Mark Hammond, Kathryn Hausbeck, Maryse Noiseux
Editorial Input:
Michael Ondaatje, Werner Penzel, Peter Weber, Bruce McDonald
Additional Music Performances:
Fred Frith, Dimitri de Perrot
Producers:
Ingrid Veninger, Alexandra Rockingham Gill, Cornelia Seitler
Executive Producers:
Andreas Züst, Atom Egoyan, Peter Mettler

   

PETER METTLER

For 20 years Peter Mettler has continued to create the kinds of films deemed impossible to make yet readily appreciated once they exist. A key figure in the critical wave of 80’s Canadian filmmakers including Atom Egoyan, Bruce McDonald, Patricia Rozema, Robert Lepage, Mettler has consistently produced works which elude categorization. Melting intuitive processes with drama, essay, experiment or documentation, his films continue to take a unique and influential position in creative expression and the merging of forms from cinema and other disciplines. Meditations on our world, rooted in personal experience, they reflect the visions and wonder of their characters and audiences alike. Mettlers films have garnered many prizes and been the subject of retrospectives internationally.

 Films include:

Scissere (´82) and Eastern Avenue (´85) experimental investigations into the movements of the subconscious.

The Top of his Head (´89) feature drama following the search for identity in a media driven world.

Tectonic Plates (´92) feature drama, an adaptation of the play by Robert Lepage & Co. The movement of the

earths tectonic plates is used to illustrate interconnecting stories on a human scale.

Picture of Light (´94) feature documentary, takes a film crew to the sub-artic to capture the wonder of the

northern lights on celluloid.

Balifilm (´96) 30 min. diary/performance, a lyrical tribute to the creative forces found on the island of Bali.

Gambling, Gods and LSD (02) documentary, a three-hour journey across cultures, people and time; an

exploration of the notions of transcendence and belief.

 Mettler, a Swiss Canadian citizen, and a strong supporter of independent filmmaking, has collaborated with Werner Penzel, Michael Ondaatje, Atom Egoyan, Peter Weber, Andreas Züst, Fred Frith, Alexandra Rockingham Gill, Robert Lepage, Bruce McDonald, Patricia Rozema and many others. The various image and sound works of Mettler are occasionally presented in the form of exhibition or performance. A book on his work entitled Making the Invisible Visible was published in 1995. A creative residency, Verein Alpenhof was established, together with a group of artists, in Appenzell Switzerland in 2001. Currently Mettler is determining what to do with all the unused material from the shooting of Gambling, Gods and LSD.

 Selected highlights

Balifilm                          Sonic Boom: Live performance with Evergreen Club Gamelan

                                                Duisburger Filmwoche: Best Short Film

                                                Visions du Reel: Opening Night Presentation

Picture of Light               Hot Docs Toronto: Best Film, Best Cinematography, & Best Writing

                                                Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland: La Sarraz Prize

                                                Swiss Ministry of Culture: Award for Excellence in the Arts

                                                Figueira da Foz International Festival: Grand Prize (Images & Documents)

                                                MCTV Award: Best Ontario Film

                                                Yamagata International Documentary Festival: Award for Excellence

Tectonic Plates               Figuera da Foz:  Most Innovative Film of the Festival

                                                Mannheim Film Festival: Catholic Jury Award

                                                Colombus, Ohio: Grand Prize & Award for Excellence

As Cinematographer       Krapps Last Tape with John Hurt by Atom Egoyan.

                                                The Ring by Angus Reid

                                                Leda and the Swan by Alexandra Rockingham Gill

                                                The Life is the Red Wagon by Jane Siberry                                      

                                                Family Viewing by Atom Egoyan.

                                                Artist on Fire with Joyce Weiland by Kay Armatage

                                                Walking after Midnight by Jonothan Kay                                         

                                                A Trip Around Lake Ontario with David MacFadden by Colin Brunton

                                                Passion A Letter in 16mm by Patricia Rozema

                                                Divine Solitude with Nana Gleason by Jean-Marc Lariviere.       

                                                Next of Kin by Atom Egoyan

                                                Knock Knock by Bruce McDonald               

                                                David Roche Talks To You About Love by Jeremy Podeswa

Other                            Retrospective ARSENAL, Berlin 1999

                                                Retrospective tour in Holland, by MECANO, 1998

                                                Retrospective and photo exhibition at CINEMATEQUE ONTARIO 1996 - Toronto

                                                Retrospective at VIPER Festival 1995 - Lucerne, Switzerland

                                                Exhibition of B&W photographic prints, I Died Shortly Thereafter

                                                Solo show, Foto Forum St.Gallen, Switzerland 1995   

                                                Member of improvisational music trio ESP, Switzerland, since 1993

 

 TE-LE-DIV-IN-I-TRY

te-le- (téli) prefix far off, covering a distance > combining form, to or at a distance: telekinesis //

television// used in names of instruments for operating over long distances [origin: from Greek téle- ‘far off’]

te-le-path-y (télipathi) n. the supposed communication of  thoughts or ideas otherwise than by the known senses

div-i-na-tion (divenéijn) n. a divining or foretelling of the future or the unknown by supernatural means//  guessing by intuition(O.F.)

di-vine (divàin) adj. of God or a god, divine wisdom// having the nature of God// (pop.) superlatively good or beautiful, divine music

di-vined v.t. to guess//foretell// v.i. to detect  the presence of water or metals  underground by means of a forked, esp. hazel, twig or rods// to practice  divination

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