Picture of Light

Picture of Light
Directed by Peter Mettler
Produced by Petter Mettler
Alexandra Rockingham Gill
Written by Peter Mettler
Starring Peter Mettler
Andreas Zuest
Music by Jim O'Rourke
Cinematography Peter Mettler
Edited by Peter Mettler
Mike Nunn
Alexandra Rockingham Gill
Distributed by Grimthorpe Films
Release date
 December 15, 1994 (Switzerland); May 5, 1996 (Toronto)
Running time
 83 minutes
Country Canada
Switzerland
Language English
Budget $650,000

Picture of Light is a 1994 Canada-Switzerland poetic feature documentary from Peter Mettler filmed in Churchill, Manitoba, on two trips in 1991 and again in 1992. It is one of the key films of the Toronto New Wave.

Synopsis

Canadian/Swiss filmmaker Peter Mettler’s goal of filming the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the northern lights, is both a quest, a visual symphony and an extended metaphor. The journey begins with an train trip through the blustery snow scape from Winnipeg to Churchill, a community only accessible by rail or plane on the shores of Hudson Bay.[1]

A five-member crew, including Mettler, who appears in the film and provides the voice-over commentary, along with eccentric Swiss meteorologist, Andreas Zuest, who financed the film, camps out in a local motel run by a Croat immigrant populated by an odd collection of rugged Churchillian residents while they wait for the conditions to be right to capture the notoriously difficult lights on film.

An intellectual travelogue, the film examines the gulf between the knowable and ineffable. It is a cool meditation on nature, technology[2] and a remarkable visual postcard from a corner of the country few Canadians ever get to see for themselves. Mettler used time-lapse photography to capture the stunning, dancing lights, and among other things had to work in conditions so extreme, the camera had to be protected against temperatures dropping to minus 40 Celsius.[3]

Tom McSorley on Picture of Light

“On one level, Picture of Light is a quintessential Canadian portrait of a natural world in extremis – a community surviving in a harsh land; a living, breathing, good-natured defiance of the elements; a frigid reminder of the necessity and futility of technology. It is also an examination of an elusive, fluid subject from different points of view. Essentially, the film is an accumulation of representations, or pictures of the lights, whether in language, photographic, or video images.”[4]

Awards

Cinéfest – Best Ontario Feature

References

  1. ↑ Groen, Rick (May 24, 1996). "Hunting for Light on the Frozen Tundra (review)". Globe and Mail.
  2. ↑ Bergman, Brian (June 3, 1996). "Images of Fire and Ice (review)". Maclean's: 57.
  3. ↑ André, Agnes. "Peter Mettler's 'Petropolis' And 'Picture Of Light'". Berlin Film Journal. Berlin International Film Festival. Retrieved May 24, 2017.
  4. ↑ McSorley, Tom (Winter 1995). "Paradox and Wonder: The Cinema of Peter Mettler". Take One: Film in Canada. 3 (7): 28–31.
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