The 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will feature a homage to esteemed Swiss-Canadian director filmmaker Peter Mettler whose films “create a space for exploring humanity’s search for meaning and questions about its existence in a captivatingly impartial and reverent way,” writes the festival.
The two chapters that Mettler has so far released of his seven-part cinematic diary While the Green Grass Grows won him the Grand Prix at the 2023 Visions du Réel festival. Drawing upon Mettler’s personal memories and family experiences, the film looks at life cycles and the way the world is constantly changing. While the Green Grass Grows will compete for the Golden Dove in DOK Leipzig’s International Competition Documentary Film.
The homage will also include two of his earlier films: Picture of Light (1994), in which his team goes in search of the Northern Lights and acquiesces to a state of waiting, and Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), a hypnotic, musical film about people in search of transcendence and ecstasy.
“Peter Mettler is a traveller who is constantly sifting through the layers of time and space and the continuum of the filmmaking process, aware that the significance of human beings on Planet Earth is ultimately of little consequence,” notes Annina Wettstein, the programme’s curator.
During a Leipzig masterclass, Mettler will provide insight into filmmaking processes and will also present previously unreleased excerpts from other instalments of While the Green Grass Grows.
DOK Leipzig will also be showcasing the work of animator Tess Martin. Born in the US, Martin has lived in Italy, Ghana and the UK and is currently living in the Netherlands. “Her experience of growing up amid different cultures allows her personal perspective on such themes as belonging, identity, interpersonal issues and historical events to inform her art,” the festival notes.
1976: Search for Life is an example of this, the festival further underlines, interweaving memories of her own family with images from the landing of the first NASA probes on Mars. This work, which was originally conceived as an installation, crosses over into fine art, as does The Whale Story, a stop-motion animated film in which an actor portraying a diver interacts with a mural depicting a whale.
Martin embraces different media and styles, from charcoal drawings to painted glass, to photo cut-outs and pixilation, to Phonotrope animation.
“Many of Tess Martin’s films reveal her analogue approach,” says curator and animator Franka Sachse. “She doesn’t conceal or remove the traces of this. They’re ever so slightly palpable – in hand-cut paper, in barely perceptible fingerprints in smudged charcoal, and in the subtle vibration of sequential photographs against a static background.”
The 66th edition of DOK Leipzig will take place from 8 to 15 October, 2023.
