Peter Mettler
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This biographical article is written like a résumé. Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (June 2008) |
| Peter Mettler | |
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 Peter Mettler in India while shooting the documentary "Gambling, Gods and LSD" |
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| Born | Peter Mark Mettler September 7, 1958 Toronto, Canada |
| Occupation | Film director Cinematographer Photographer |
| Years active | 1976 - Present |
Peter Mettler (born September 7, 1958 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian film director and cinematographer.[1]
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[edit] Biography
Peter Mettler was born in 1958 to Swiss parents and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He became interested in the power of film and images at an early age, making his first films, Super 8 #1 and Reverie, at the age of eighteen.
He went on to study cinema at Ryerson University (1977–1982) where he made two short films, Lancalot Freely (1980) and Gregory (1981), and the award-winning feature film Scissere (1982).
It is at Ryerson where Mettler began to collaborate with many of his contemporaries. Further to his own work Mettler, an acclaimed cinematographer, shot the first two films of Atom Egoyan, and the early works of Patricia Rozema, Bruce McDonald, Jeremy Podeswa, Ron Mann, and many other independent film makers in the 1980s.
Mettler's subsequent films explore themes foreshadowed in his earliest works - the wonder and intrigue of human perception, technology’s ability to both liberate and enslave, the authenticity of experience through the illusion of cinema, the ephemeral essence that exists beyond a photographed subject, the ease at which reality slips into abstraction. These themes are the fabric which weave together such films as Mettler’s Eastern Avenue (1985), The Top of His Head (1989), Tectonic Plates (1991), Picture of Light (1994), and Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002).
Mettler is currently in production on a film tentatively titled Time Being. The film is a process-oriented exploration of our outer world as a reflection of our inner conditions. Drawing from fields of science, philosophy, religion and subjective experience, it explores notions of time and perception, both as a witness to and chronicle of the poignant place in history we occupy today.
[edit] Films
[edit] Scissere
Scissere (1982): While deploying a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of optical effects, Scissere renders the experiences of a mental patient who wanders outside his institutional confines for the first time in many years. He imagines himself inside the sensibilities of three people he randomly spots at a bus station – a young mother, a heroin addict and an entomologist.
Norman Maclaren Award; Best Student Film
[edit] The Top of His Head
The Top of His Head (1989) The story of Gus Victor, a satellite dish salesman whose ordered world is turned upside down by a radical and alluring performance artist. A cryptic note left by Lucy leads Gus on a quest which draws him out of the tyranny of the material world to open his perceptions in the most unexpected and awesome ways.
[edit] Eastern Avenue
Eastern Avenue (1985) An exploration of intuition, using film as a kind of audio-visual improvisation. The structure and innate "story" of the film were formed by the chronology of experiences and perceptions that emerged from a journey to Berlin, Portugal and Switzerland.
[edit] Tectonic Plates
Tectonic Plates (1991) criss-crosses the globe—from Venice to Paris, New York, Montreal and Scotland—following Madeleine, a French Canadian painter, as varied and intricate events and individuals sculpt her life and art. The single image of Plate Tectonics—the landmasses that support the Earth's ever-shifting continents—becomes a powerful metaphor for the evolution of human life and culture, of the forces and restraints that shape the way we think, act and feel.
Figuera da Foz: Most Innovative Film of the Festival
Mannheim Film Festival: Catholic Jury Award
Colombus, Ohio: Grand Prize & Award for Excellence
[edit] Picture of Light
Picture of Light (1994) An hallucinatory tale which documents a filmmaker’s journey to Canada’s arctic in search of the Northern Lights. While combining glimpses of the characters who live in this remote environment and the crew’s both comic and absurd attempts to deal with extremes, the film reflects upon the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the natural wonder of the Northern Lights on celluloid.
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
[edit] Balifilm
Balifilm (1997) Mettler brings us into the world of the mystical and the unconscious through his exploration of this extraordinary culture. balifilm was originally commissioned as a musical performance, created from diary images and sounds collected in 1990 and 1992 while traveling on the island of Bali.
Sonic Boom: Live performance with Evergreen Club Gamelan
Duisburger Filmwoche: Best Short Film
Visions du Réel documentary film festival, Nyon, Switzerland: Opening Night Presentation
[edit] Gambling, Gods, and LSD
Gambling, Gods, and LSD (2002) 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.
Visions du Réel, Nyon: Grand Prix & Prix du Publique
Vancouver International Film Festival: NFB Best Feature Documentary
Montreal Festival de Nouveau Cinema: NFB Best Documentary
Duisburger Filmwoche: 3SAT Prize for Best Documentary
Toronto International Film Festival Group: Top Twenty Canadian Films
FIPRESCI Documentary runner-up
Academy of Canadian Television and Cinema: Genie Award: Best Documentary
Swiss Ministry of Culture: Award for Excellence in the Arts
Lincoln Center/Film Comment: One of the Year's Best Films
[edit] Petropolis
Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands (2009) shot primarily from a helicopter, filmmaker Peter Mettler's "Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands" offers an unparalleled view of the world's largest industrial, capital and energy project. Canada's tar sands are an oil reserve the size of England. Extracting the crude oil called bitumen from underneath unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort with far-reaching impacts on the land, air, water, and climate.
Visions du Réel, Nyon: Youth Public Choice Award
Festival Dei Popolil: Prize for Distribution
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
White, Jerry, Of This Place and Elsewhere, (Toronto: Wilfrid Laurier University, 2006). ISBN 0-9689132-5-3
Pitschen, Salome, Annette Schøonholzer, Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible"
