Jerry White

Toronto International Film Festival Group

A key figure in the Toronto New Wave of the 1980s, Peter Mettler is one of the most intriguing and audacious filmmakers in English Canada. He is known as a director, a cinematographer, and editor who has worked with many major English-Canadian filmmakers and adapted for the screen the play Tectonic Plates by the renowned Québécois filmmaker and theatre director Robert Lepage. His own films bridge the gaps between experimental, narrative, personal essay, and documentary. Mettler is also a pioneer in multimedia work, having produced groundbreaking and legendary live visual mixing performances, a field in which he has acquired a leading international reputation. Jerry White’s monograph on Mettler’s work includes discussion of all of his major films, among them chapters devoted to Picture of Light and Gambling, Gods and LSD. It places Mettler in a Canadian context but also deals with his identity as a Swiss artist and his place in an emerging global cinema. The book also includes a selection of Mettler’s photographic work. Published by the Toronto International Film Festival and distributed in Canada by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Distributed outside Canada by Indiana University Press.

The Films and Photography of Peter Mettler

Of This Place and Elsewhere

David Clandfield

Pierre Perrault

One of the great exponents of the direct cinema style, Quebecois poet, essayist, and film-maker Pierre Perrault (1927-1999) began his documentary career in radio before joining the more traditional Ren’e Bonni’ere filming life in the lower St. Lawrence. In the 1960s he joined the National Film Board of Canada to shoot films in the new direct style, taking a small two-man crew into communities to reveal their beliefs and allegiances as they coped with social change. His legendary trilogy on the Ile-aux-Coudres opened with his most famous work, Pour la suite du monde (1963). Ostensibly a look at the local people’s effort to revive a traditional beluga hunt, it is actually the beginning of a lifelong inquiry into the relationship between community and national identity. This relationship emerges most clearly in the highly poetic Un pays sans bon sens! (1970), which brought Perrault into conflict with the NFB. The film was sidelined for many years. After a trip outside Quebec to Moncton to document francophone student unrest, Perrault made a second trilogy, this one in northwestern Quebec, showing the collapse of traditional farming communities relocated to the Abitibi during the Great Depression. Further explorations took Perrault to the northern interiors of Quebec, the hunting woods of Maniwaki, and to the tall ships retracing Jacques Cartier’s voyages of discovery. The triology culminated in the desolate arctic landscapes of the mysterious muskox, and two of his most haunting creations. The first major publication on Perrault in English, Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary discusses not only the world that Perrault’s cinema revealed but a revolution in film-making from a great poet. Co-written and edited by David Clandfield, Principal of New College in the University of Toronto, Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary also features contributions from scholar Jerry White, as well as translations of some of Perrault’s writings on film. Published by the Toronto International Film Festival. Distributed in Canada by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Distributed outside Canada by Indiana University Press.

Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary

Cinematheque Ontario

A visionary who consistently explored new styles and approaches in her art and films, Joyce Wieland grappled with nationalism, feminism, environmentalism and spirituality. The Films of Joyce Wieland brings together essays by Canadian and American theorists about the artists and her work. It includes a never-before-published interview between Wieland and experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton and a comprehensive annotated bibliography of the film literature on Wieland. Published by Cinematheque Ontario. Distributed in Canada by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Distributed outside Canada by Indiana University Press.

Toronto International Film Festival Group

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