Peter Mettler Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Peter Mettler
Directing
Biography
Peter Mettler (born September 7, 1958) is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer. He is best known for his unique, intuitive approach to documentary, evinced by such films as Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), and The End of Time (2012). He has also worked as a cinematographer on films by Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Bruce McDonald, and Jennifer Baichwal, and has collaborated with numerous other artists, including Michael Ondaatje, Fred Frith, Jim O'Rourke, Jane Siberry, Robert Lepage, Edward Burtynsky, Greg Hermanovic, Richie Hawtin, Neil Young, Jeremy Narby, and Franz Treichler.
Filmography Movies
Acting
The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy
The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.
Gregory
A man and a woman awake in the middle of the night. The woman is upset by her dreams and what she perceives as the untouchable nature of her mind, unlike the physical nature of her body. The man recounts the story of his youth – when he was not allowed to go out to play, his mind would go outside instead. An elliptical series of scenes unfold as though in the mind of the man – an encounter with an epileptic, a prostitute, and a demented therapist - all somehow address the mind/body schism. A school film written and completed in two weeks, incorporating preliminary image manipulation techniques via the use of contact printing and Mettler’s first use of sound montage in a musical sense.
Gambling, Gods and LSD
Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.
The Giant Buddhas
Christian Frei's documentary traces the tragic tale of the giant Buddhas of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, which stood as monumental landmarks for 1,500 years until 2001, when the Taliban declared that all non-Islamic statues in the country be destroyed. Despite international protest, the statues were blown up. Through interwoven narratives from past and present, Frei's film sheds light on the disturbing consequences of religious fanaticism.
Fell in Love with a Girl
A film about longstanding relationships, family, and the deep consequences of falling in love. While exploring themes of love in music, poetry and art, the filmmaker reflects on his life and the journeys on which love has taken him. Now, a new journey will test him again, an intercontinental exodus to keep his family together. A real and intimate portrait about the complexity of love.
Production
Gambling, Gods and LSD
Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.
The End of Time
Working at the limits of what can easily be expressed, filmmaker Peter Mettler takes on the elusive subject of time, and once again turns his camera to filming the unfilmable. From the particle accelerator in Switzerland, where scientists seek to probe regions of time we cannot see, to lava flows in Hawaii which have overwhelmed all but one home on the south side of Big Island; from the disintegration of inner-city Detroit, to a Hindu funeral rite near the place of Buddha's enlightenment, Mettler explores our perception of time. He dares to dream the movie of the future while also immersing us in the wonder of the everyday. THE END OF TIME, at once personal, rigorous and visionary, Peter Mettler has crafted a film as compelling and magnificent as its subject.
Scissere
A recently released mental patient imagines himself living the lives of three different people he randomly encounters.
Scissere
A recently released mental patient imagines himself living the lives of three different people he randomly encounters.
Picture of Light
A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.
Picture of Light
A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.
Picture of Light
A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.
Elimination Dance
Ever more bizarre criteria are used to eliminate couples from a secret dance event.
Passion: A Letter in 16mm
The film takes the form of an extremely intimate Letter in 16mm from Anna, normally a documentary filmmaker, to her unidentified lover. From the first 'exquisite ache' of romantic passion to her final drunken and solitary dance with success, Anna struggles with an all-too-prevalent problem in this achievement-oriented age: Is it possible to balance a passion for excellence with a passion for intimacy?Are obsessions mutually exclusive?
Krapp's Last Tape
In Krapp's Last Tape, which was written in English in 1958, an old man reviews his life and assesses his predicament. We learn about him not from the 69-year-old man on stage, but from his 39-year-old self on the tape he chooses to listen to. On the 'awful occasion' of his birthday, Krapp was then and is now in the habit of reviewing the past year and 'separating the grain from the husks'. He isolates memories of value, fertility and nourishment to set against creeping death 'when all my dust has settled'. One part of 19 parts for series "Beckett on Film" featuring filmed versions of Beckett plays, some screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and some on Channel 4 television in the UK in June 2001.
Gallery
