Biography
“Peter Mettler is one of the most original artists working today. Few filmmakers are as attuned to the wonders of existence, or to the sensual and perceptual possibilities of cinema.” – Dennis Lim, Lincoln Center Film Society
“Peter Mettler is an incomparable talent in Canadian cinema. The innovation and audacity of his work, his dedication to the cinematic art form, and his ability to conjure up images that remain permanently etched in one's mind, secures his place as one of this country's most distinguished filmmakers.” – Piers Handling, TIFF
From the beginning of his career, Peter Mettler has created films deemed impossible to make yet readily appreciated once they exist. Melding intuition with dramatic, documentary, and experimental forms, Mettler’s cinema is at the forefront of contemporary practice. Meditations on our world, rooted in personal experience, his films reflect the visions and wonder of their characters and audiences alike.
A restless cinematic adventurer, Peter Mettler’s singular body of work is characterized by hybridism, a sense of wonder, unusual forms of collaboration, and a disregard for classification. Frequently visiting themes of transcendence and the delicate relationship between technology and the natural world, Mettler’s films combine travelogue, essay, interview, fiction and critique. They are guided by instinct yet grounded in discipline, structure, craft, and a knack for apprehending stunning images and great stories.
No single work is more teeming with such images and stories than Mettler’s wildly ambitious magnum opus, Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), which Jason Anderson described as “a sort of divine sacrament, melting the viewer’s synapses with a mesmerizing array of sights, sounds and genuinely profound insights.” An epic project ten years in the making, Gambling, Gods and LSD traverses three continents to discover tales and visions of ecstasy, awe and atonement. Similar in spirit and methodology are Picture of Light (1994) and The End of Time (2012). Picture of Light was made as a result of an encounter with the Swiss artist-scientist-collector Andreas Züst, who charged Mettler with the quixotic task of capturing the aurora borealis on film, leading the pair to brave arctic temperatures and construct a special time-lapse camera system capable of operating in extreme conditions. Playful and philosophical, Picture of Light is a richly atmospheric journey, praised by John Powers of Vogue as “an extraordinary piece of filmmaking... In an era when only one movie in a hundred has a single moment of visionary power, Picture of Light is bursting with them.” The End of Time takes viewers to exotic locales in search of insight on the forces that give our lives meaning, conveying macro- and microscopic realms from particle colliders to lava fields, urban decay and an interstellar observatory. The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Dalton called it “immersive and hypnotic... a ravishingly beautiful experience.”
While his films are immensely personal, an essential component of Mettler’s practice is collaboration and adaptation. Among his most illustrious collaborators is fellow Torontonian Atom Egoyan, for whom Mettler photographed Next of Kin (1984) and the Samuel Beckett adaptation Krapp’s Last Tape (2000). Mettler served as director of photography and creative consultant on Jennifer Baichwal’s multi-award-winning Manufactured Landscapes (2006), which profiled the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky and opens with one of Mettler’s most indelible shots: a protracted lateral pan that entrances viewers as it gradually coveys the seemingly impossible scale of a factory floor in China. Mettler has also adapted the work of renowned theatre director Robert Lepage with Tectonic Plates (1992), shot on location in Venice, Scotland and Montreal, boldly fusing the artifice of theatre with wondrous spectacles gleaned from the real world. More recently, Mettler collaborated with Stéphanie Barbey and Luc Peter as cinematographer and co-editor on Broken Land (2014), a feature documentary about the US–Mexico border, and with Emma Davie and David Abram on Becoming Animal (2018), which considers how animistic philosophy can address the environmental and perceptual crises of our era. Mettler’s additional collaborators include Bruce McDonald, Jeremy Podeswa, Patricia Rozema, Jane Siberry, Michael Ondaatje, Andreas Züst, Jim O’Rourke, Fred Frith, Alexandra Rockingham Gill, Ingrid Veninger, Werner Penzel, Albert Hoffman, Peter Weber, Greg Hermanovic, Andrea Nann, Peter Liechti, Gabriel Scotti, Vincent Hanni, Costanza Francavilla, Ritchie Hawtin, and Neil Young.
Mettler on location in India shooting Gambling, Gods and LSD
Mettler’s films have been the focus of multiple retrospectives, including at TIFF, BAFICI, Lincoln Centre, Pacific Film Archive, Jeu de Paume Paris, Cinémathèque Suisse, Hot Docs, Festival dei Popoli, Kinoatelje Film Festival, and many other festivals and cinematheques. His awards include a 2003 Genie from the Academy of Canadian Cinema for Best Documentary, the La Sarraz Prize from Locarno, Grand Prix and Prix du Jeune Publique at Vision Du Réel, Grand Prize at Figueira da Foz Festival, and Best Film, Cinematography, and Writing at Hot Docs. His works have been the subject of two books: Making The Invisible Visible (1995), and Of This Place and Elsewhere: The Films and Photography of Peter Mettler (2006). In 2017, Picture of Light was selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s Essential 150 Films.
Mettler’s activities, however, have not been confined to film production. Following the completion of Gambling, Gods and LSD, Mettler became interested in developing an improvisational approach to cinematic montage within a live context. Since 2005, Mettler has worked with the software company Derivative Inc. to develop a digital image-mixing software platform that he has used in numerous performances, collaborating with a diverse array of collaborators – including musicians, dancers, poets, and multimedia artists – in a wide range of locales, from radio theaters and cinemas to dance clubs and wilderness retreats. His recent commissions include a collaboration with Biosphere at Hot Docs 2013, with Paul Frehner and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at New Creations Festival 2016, and with John Oswald at in/future Festival 2016. These events push Mettler’s established skills into ever-newer territories, entrancing audiences with the audio-visual allure of cinema while offering the exhilaration of witnessing something spontaneous and achingly ephemeral. Most recently, Mettler has toured across Europe performing Yoshtoyoshto, a live divination of image, story and music produced in collaboration with anthropologist Jeremy Narby and musician Franz Treichler.
“Mettler’s clear-headed idealism, his awareness and inquisitiveness […] turn limitations into art – into opportunities for transcendence – making him one of contemporary world cinema’s most compelling and unique filmmakers.” – Jerry White
“Mettler's films offer more than can generally be expected in the cinema: no escapism and numbing of the senses, but a formidable school of perception, associative visions and ideas for sharpened awareness, encouragement for an open mind… instead of linearly telling a story, he breaks apart conceptual thinking to create moods beyond rational and linguistically nameable truths.” – Marcel Elsener
“Mettler has tuned himself to the world. His camera is like a musical instrument. Always receptive to the unexpected, he follows invisible currents to eavesdrop on the miracles of daily life and rediscovers wonder.” – Peter Weber
