Peter Mettler

Motivation

The 2018 Darko Bratina Award is presented to Peter Mettler for his unique poetics developed outside the mainstream of the film industry and for his exceptional body of work in independent cinema, which for three decades has evaded any genre categorization, whether in documentary or feature films.

Mettler holds dual citizenship, Swiss and Canadian. This binary (op)position, which he has never renounced, allows him to never be solely inside or outside of what he captures with his camera. On the contrary, the historical memory, which many contemporary filmmakers today try to shed as an unnecessary burden, is just one of the impulses for his deconstruction. For Mettler, a border is only part of a whole that assembles each time he crosses it—whether it’s a border with infinity, immateriality, or just a physical border that he understands as just another movable milestone of history.

Selected filmography

1980: Lancalot Freely

1982: Scissere

1985: Eastern Avenue

1989: The Top of His Head

1992: Tectonic Plates

1994: Picture of Light

1996: Balifilm

2002: Gambling, Gods and LSD

2009: Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

2012: The End of Time

2018: Becoming Animal