Peter Mettler: “My new work is the most personal”
Published: Thursday, Jan 4th 2024, 13:11
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In his new film "While the Green Grass Grows", Swiss director Peter Mettler deals with the death of his parents. In an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency, he talks about the role of the audience, his mistrust and the power of cinema.
Peter Mettler, you talk about a love-hate relationship with filmmaking. What do you mean by that?
Mettler: "I love the fact that it is possible to create worlds in a movie. Regardless of whether they exist only in the imagination or are real observations. It doesn't matter whether it's about pure emotions or whether the worlds are made up of archive material. The decisive factor is that the power of the images is transferred to the audience. At the same time, I am fundamentally suspicious of the technologies that make image and sound recordings possible and of the tendency for these recordings to replace real and immediate experiences. What's more, these technologies are offered and controlled by mega-corporations and our consciousness can therefore be strongly influenced by them."
Your works are always personal. What role does the audience play?
Mettler: "My new work is the most personal one I've made so far. It's a cinematic diary. I observe the people who are closest to me and accompany them as they die. I decided to make a movie that is on the one hand enormously personal, but on the other hand speaks to everyone because it is universal and deals with our finiteness. I hope that my work will be an inspiration to audiences as they come to terms with the inevitable passage of time and the change that affects us all."
You are a close observer and get to the bottom of things. Has that always been the case?
Mettler: "The older I get, the more convinced I am that I was born this way."
What power of change does film have?
Mettler: "Movies can be very powerful. They are nothing less than a substitute for real experiences. Films can not only convey storylines and information, show character sketches and emotions, but also put the viewer in a so-called first-person position, so that she feels like she is having the experience she sees on the screen herself. I am convinced that all of us have memories of profound experiences that we were able to have in the movie theater."
Is it worth living in the moment?
Mettler: "I think it is valuable and important to be aware of the moment you are living in. In other words, not just to go forwards and backwards in your mind, but to observe attentively with all your senses and perceive what is happening right now. It is important to me to be aware of the transition between past, present and future - and my films try to reflect this on a formal level. For me, the present is a constant process of becoming and passing away."
What mark would you like to leave on this earth?
Mettler: "I would be delighted if my films succeeded in giving people an impression of how we lived and thought at a certain time and with what eyes we saw and perceived the world. My films should be clues as to how we got to where we are today. That is also the reason why I like to film "real" life, bringing together the banal, the everyday, the normal with all the extraordinary that springs from our imagination and creativity. "*.
*This interview by Raphael Amstutz, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
©Keystone/SDA
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