Balifilm.

Grimthorpe Film, 28 min. 16mm. 1997.

While he has worked on other films as a cinematographer, Balifilm is Peter Mettler's first film since Picture of Light (1994). Shot as a visual diary on two trips to Bali, it is a poetic documentary in the tradition of Joris Ivens, Arne Sucksdorff and Werner Herzog. Not unlike his "intuitive" experimental road-movie-cum-diary, Eastern Avenue (1985), Balifilm is an evocative observational journey into another culture and into the filmmaking process itself. Filming landscapes, traditional Balinese dancers and musicians, and an astonishing shadow puppet performance, Mettler stitches fast and slowmotion, optically printed, black-and-white and colour sequences into an extraordinary tapestry of perception. As usual with Mettler, the production process itself informs the result: he shot the film on short ends and old stock, transferred the footage to video for editing, then transferred the finished video edit back to film. The music, performed mainly by the Evergreen Club Gamelan ensemble, guided Mettler's rough edits and the soundtrack is largely a live performance the group did with the final cut of the film. Authoritative and inquisitive, Balifilm is a rewarding exploration of cinema's unique fusion of sound, silence and vision.