Retrospective of Peter Mettler: State of Expanded Cinematic Vision

Already Mettler’s first student film SCISSERE from 1982 does not leave anyone in the dark about the fact that a young talented filmmaker has entered the scene. Following the first moments of a former psychiatric patient’s return to the society, the experimental film based on optical illusions has received the Norman McLaren Prize. The following works by Mettler, too, have generously drawn upon the innovative means of expression of the film language. His early film EASTERN AVENUE can be seen as a specific form of an improvised audiovisual diary from his European travels. On the contrary, his later GAMBLING, GODS AND LSD lacks any clear narrative form. The camera succumbs to the intuitive merging of the individual images, alluding to the problems and phenomena of modern culture.

However, it is not just experimental visual and narrative approaches that Peter Mettler employs in his films. To him, the very film medium is a means of creating an experiment of his own. For instance, in PICTURE OF LIGHT, which has won the main award at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, he sets out to observe the aurora, which becomes a metaphor for the search for the original relationship between man and nature. The dependence of the present society on oil wealth is discussed in PETROPOLIS, untraditionally recorded from a bird’s eye view. Last but not least, the retrospective also includes the filmmaker’s latest “experiment”, the cinematic essay THE END OF TIME from 2012 dedicated to the theme of time.

Explore the possibilities of the film medium as well as the possibilities of your own perception in the online retrospective of films by Peter Mettler from April 21 to May 4 at DAFilms.com for free.