Part 1

Part 2

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Media pundits say outlets like Tiktok and Instagram have distilled ideas into their purest and shortest form: a thirty second clip best viewed on a smartphone. This, they say, is our future. But not everything is shrinking. Some films are growing, lengthening and expanding. Would you believe I just saw a seven-and-a-half hour movie… and loved it?

It’s a film diary whose seven chapters are shown in two parts. This philosophical travelogue and life-record follows its filmmaker over half a decade in Canada, New Mexico, Cuba and Switzerland. It deals with images of animals and caves, rivers and waterfalls, alongside a personal examination of life and death, and the past and the future.

The film’s called While the Green Grass Grows and is  written, directed and photographed by award-winning Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler. Peter’s retrospectives — featuring Gambling Gods and LSD, and Picture of Light — have been shown at the Lincoln Center, the Jeu de Paume, and Cinémathèque Suisse, while his cinematography can be seen in movies like Robert Lepage’s Tectonic Plates and Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes. With a distinct cinematic style that lies somewhere between experimental film and documentary, Peter explores both the physical world and the ideas we carry within our minds. 

While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts will have its world premiere at #TIFF50.

I spoke with Peter Mettler in Toronto, via ZOOM.