McCool vs. Mettler (6 min. 2004) A mash-up of the Picture of Light by Peter Mettler and band Finn McCool’s performance recorded and edited by Lester Alfonso.
Day 19 of 360 videos from my archive. Today’s video is connected to a long involved story that I must now begin to tell somehow. One night in Lake St. Peter, Ontario, something got into me. I think it might have been those intense Northern Lights that winter.
My friend Brooke invited me over to his place at Dragonfly Commune to hang out with his Celtic music band while they jammed. I brought my video camera along as usual. On the walk back to my studio, the northern lights were particularly intense and I saw shapes and formations that literally looked like angels.
I had a worn-out copy of Peter Mettler’s Picture of Light on VHS on my desk that I had rented from Have You Seen…? in downtown Peterborough and it was already two weeks late. Perhaps I need my own copy, I thought to myself.
As I sat down to digitize the band footage, the idea came together. It was a collision of unlikely elements. I was suddenly inspired to try blending this movie and that band and somehow try to recreate my experience to share with the band through making this movie. I tried to make Lake St. Peter look like Churchill, Manitoba.
Many logs were burned to keep the studio warm that night. I worked late, into the morning. When I managed to fall asleep, I dreamed that I was in a summer place walking barefoot on a grassy hill. There were many others gathered here wearing scarves and sarongs. It was some kind of pilgrimage or festival and I saw myself happy and handing out a flyer of some sort to everyone I came across.
The meaning of this dream eluded me for months but it would later inform a key decision I made that changed my life forever and lead to my meeting filmmaker Peter Mettler.
TO BE CONTINUED…
NOTE: This brilliant film is now available here digitally restored from the original 35mm negative and featuring a newly remastered soundtrack
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