Picture of Light

Peter Mettler in person on November 10!

In the early ’90s, Mettler embarked with a small crew on a 1,000-mile journey by train in the hopes of filming the unfilmable: the elusive, majestic Northern Lights. In Picture of Light, the director pairs footage of the phenomenon itself—deep greens, blinding whites, shimmering, dancing streaks, wisps and rays, all captured at a mere three frames-per-second—with his own voice-over reflections, interviews with villagers living under the Lights in a remote Manitoba town, and dispatches from astronauts stationed in the (comparatively) far reaches of space. As the film goes on, it starts to question its own intent: can you record the texture of an experience so immediate and ephemeral? Should you?