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: Microcinema
: Art, Experimental/Avant-Garde
: 83 min.
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From Microcinema: Picture of Light takes the approach of a poetical essay documenting the search for a natural wonder; the mysterious Aurora Borealis. It's incorporeal lights and colors pouring from the sky lure a small film team 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 degrees Celsius - and with 50 pounds of batteries in their luggage, they set out on a 3000-mile train journey through practically uninhabited snowy landscapes to the end of the civilized world - Churchill, Manitoba.
Violent snowstorms force the crew to settle down to a long wait for a clear night in which the Northern Lights may 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 colors. A member of Space Lab 3 reports live form 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 gives 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 film material 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.
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 8.67)
3 Votes
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