Picture-Of-Light-Kit-De-Prensa.Pdf

Grimthorpe Film Inc. and Andreas Züst Present PICTURE OF LIGHT Original Version: Colour, Super 16 mm Blow-up and 35 mm, 83 min Release: 1994. Digitally restored to DCP 2017. Selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s essential top 150 films. September 14th at 3pm - TIFF Bell Lightbox Directed by Peter Mettler, the 1994 film emerged as the beginning of a new wave of subjective essay documentaries which evolved out of the work of Chris Marker and Johan Van der Keuken. Twenty-three years later the film remains as relevant and contemporary as ever. Garnering international attention and numerous prizes, PICTURE OF LIGHT was instrumental in expanding the conception of the documentary film for Both filmmakers, and festivals such as Hot Docs, Visions du Reel and CPH DOX. In 2017 TIFF Cinematheque painstakingly restored the original sound and celluloid images of the Aurora Borealis and Canada’s north into a crystal-clear digital format which will premiere at this year’s festival. We live in a time where things do not seem to exist if they are not captured as an image. But if you look into darkness you may see the lights of your own retina -- not unlike the Northern Lights, not unlike the movements of thought. Like a shapeless accumulation of everything we have ever seen. Before science explained, the Northern Lights were interpreted as visions, prophecies, spirits -- a trigger for the imagination -- images provided by nature framed by no less than the universe itself. (Quotation From Voiceover) “An extraordinary piece of filmmaking. In an era when only one movie in a hundred has a single moment of visionary power, Peter Mettler’s PICTURE OF LIGHT is bursting with them..this is a film that takes you places you have never been.” John Powers, VOGUE critic ----SHORT SYNOPSIS---- PICTURE OF LIGHT is an hallucinatory tale of a filmmaker’s journey to Canada’s arctic in search of the Northern Lights -- an encounter with the gulf Between the knowaBle and the ineffaBle, Between humankind’s need to capture and control Nature, and Nature’s refusal to be caught... ..aurora Borealis, the lights with no Bodies pouring colours from the sky... more special than any special effect... ----MEDIUM SYNOPSIS---- PICTURE OF LIGHT is 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 with the crew’s Both comic and aBsurd attempts to deal with the extreme conditions, the film reflects on the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the natural wonder of the Northern Lights on celluloid. ...aurora Borealis...the lights with no Bodies, pouring colours from the sky... images provided By nature more special than any special effect... Their majesty and mystery lead the film to a most haunting finale, which considers the future of our relationship to technology and Nature in an increasingly artificial or “virtual” world... ----LONG SYNOPSIS---- (Taken from the Book Making the Invisible Visible) Picture of Light takes the approach of a poetic essay documenting the search for a natural wonder – the mysterious Aurora Borealis. Its incorporeal lights and colours pouring from the sky lure a small film crew of six to Canada's arctic. After strenuous and complicated technical preparations - among other things, the camera had to Be protected against temperatures dropping to minus 40˚ Celsius - and with 50 pounds of batteries in their luggage, they set out on a 3000-mile train journey through a largely uninhabited and snowy landscapes to the edge of the civilized world - Churchill, Manitoba. Violent snowstorms force the crew to settle down to a long wait for a clear night during which the Northern Lights could possibly appear. Soon the TV set gains importance as the only link Between the inhaBitants of Churchill and the outside world. While waiting villagers are interviewed aBout their life under the Northern Lights: the Croatian hotel owner hardly takes any notice of them; the priest is reminded of the searchlights during World War II; an old man speaks of the lights hypnotizing effect and remembers that people used to tell the weather forecast By them; another enthuses over the beauty of their colours. A member of Space LaB 3 reports live from outer space aBout his scientific oBservations of the polar lights, explaining the effects of their enormous sources of energy on the earth's magnetosphere. Mettler himself provides a diary-like voice-over of the events, augmenting the film images with Background information, anecdotes and Inuit legends; at the same time questioning the act and responsiBility of creating filmic representations of this natural phenomenon. Over the course of a one-year editing process, the film gradually took shape out of the 18 hours of celluloid collected during two trips to Churchill. The lights could only Be made visiBle By shooting three frames per minute and later expanding time on the optical printer. Mettler was aware that the images presented to the audience would suggest a reality completely different from the actual experience. Already during the long and cold nights in Churchill, Mettler had questioned the impulse to collect images. Not least for this reason, in Picture of Light he decided for the first time to make use of the voice-over; with which he self-critically tests the powerful potential and authority of the 'invisible' voice. Picture of Light like his earlier films, deals with the tension Between nature and technology, science and mythology. It reflects the desire to track down a wonder and to capture it on film, questioning ways in which experience molded By the media increasingly threaten to replace our individual and authentic experiences. North America Press Quotes “The result of Mettler’s struggle with the elements is PICTURE OF LIGHT. It’s one of the most provocative and mesmerizing works at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.” – Craig Macinnis, THE TORONTO STAR “PICTURE OF LIGHT has the narrative innovation and esthetic Brilliance of a good drama. Hypnotic displays of the aurora Borealis...are the gold at the end of Mettler’s rainBow, But getting there is more than half the fun. The film is an existential meditation on snow and space and cold, undercut By an aBsurdist wit... Mettler goes to a world where cameras freeze and tries to film nothingness, unBroken patterns of land and sky. He achieves amazing results. In the context of Canadian cinema, where characters often live in uneasy tension with their environment, for once there is no contest: the weather wins, hands down.” – Brian D. Johnson, MACLEAN’S MAGAZINE “PICTURE OF LIGHT is luminous and genuinely transcendent...” – Gerald Peary, SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE & MAIL “Taking a tiny crew to study the aurora borealis from the chilly vantage point of Churchill, ManitoBa...has resulted in one of the most original and Breathtaking documentaries of the year. Neither conventional nor experimental, PICTURE OF LIGHT compels on a multitude of levels...where one of this country’s most immaculate imagemakers, points his camera toward the most spectacular special effect the natural world has to offer, and Brings Back a piece of heaven. Highly recommended.” – Geoff Pevere, THE GLOBE & MAIL “PICTURE OF LIGHT has the narrative innovation and esthetic Brilliance of a good drama. Hypnotic displays of the aurora Borealis...are the gold at the end of Mettler’s rainBow, But getting there is more than half the fun. The film is an existential meditation on snow and space and cold, undercut by an absurdist wit...Mettler goes to a world where cameras freeze and tries to film nothingness, unBroken patterns of land and sky. He achieves amazing results...” Brian D. Johnson, MACLEAN’S MAGAZINE "...you sense you're watching a new art form in the process of creation...among the very Best documentaries to come along in years...PICTURE OF LIGHT is an elegantly framed lyric By Peter Mettler aBout the North and the northern lights. At the very outset, the director hints there's deeper music to Be heard here By introducing us to a camera designed especially for the deep cold. Spurred on By thoughts of a man he met at a part "who watches the shy", Mettler's PICTURE OF LIGHT is as much a meditation on documentary filmmaking as it is on the North." Peter Goddard, THE TORONTO STAR "PICTURE OF LIGHT is the most Beautiful fusion of art and science I've seen since Michael Snow's La Région Centrale". Jonathan RosenBaum, CHICAGO READER critic "PICTURE OF LIGHT confronts the ontological status of film, Brandishing profundity, humour and many extraordinarily Beautiful images, concluding finally that film's relationship to reality and experience is, in the Best cases, rather like all of life's Big Questions -- puzzling, troubling, awe-inspiring." Peter Urquhart, REVERSE SHOT "Personal, quirky, inquisitive and visually sophisticated, PICTURE OF LIGHT is Canadian writer/director Peter Mettler's investigative meditation on the aurora Borealis -- the northern lights." David Armstrong, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER "With his masterful new film aBout the aurora Borealis, PICTURE OF LIGHT, a Breathtaking investigation of the powers and limits of film language, Mettler should assume his rightful, prominent place in contemporary Canadian cinema...From its title onward, PICTURE OF LIGHT articulates the paradox of the extraordinary film unspooling Before us. In a voice over that at once affirms and questions its authoritative role in the documentary tradition, Mettler reminds us that his tools are inadequate and falsifying. We know he is right. We also know, as he does, that these picture of light, these simulacra, do inspire wonder, do remind us that for all our scientific marvels and technological advances, we remain unfinished and searching.

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