Gambling, Gods and LSD

Last updated

Gambling, Gods and LSD
GamblingGods&LSD poster.jpg
2002 film poster
Directed by Peter Mettler [1]
Written byPeter Mettler [1]
Produced by Ingrid Veninger
Alexandra Gill
Cornelia Seitler [2]
StarringJohn Paul Young
Albert Hofmann [3]
CinematographyPeter Mettler [1]
Edited byPeter Mettler
Roland Schlimme [1]
Music byPeter Bräker
Fred Frith
Henryk Górecki
Jim O'Rourke [2]
Production
companies
Grimthorpe Film
Maximage
Distributed by Odeon Films (Canada)
Columbus Film AG (Switzerland) [1]
Release date
  • April 2002 (2002-04) [1]
Running time
180 minutes [1]
CountriesCanada
Switzerland [1]
LanguagesEnglish
Swiss-German (English subtitles) [1]

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a 2002 Canadian/Swiss experimental documentary film by Canadian film director Peter Mettler. It was shot between 1997 and 1999 in Canada, the United States, Switzerland and India, and is a "fragmented narrative" [4] that shows what people do to discover themselves and find happiness. [5] [6]

Contents

The film was screened at film festivals in a number of countries across the world, including Canada, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia and South Africa. It won several awards, including the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's 2003 Genie Award for "Best Documentary". [1]

Synopsis

Gambling, Gods and LSD is a "travel diary" that loosely documents director Peter Mettler's "introspective journey" through four countries: Canada, the United States, Switzerland and India. The film consists of four segments, each showing what people do to discover themselves and find happiness. [7]

The first segment takes place in Mettler's hometown of Toronto where he interviews John Paul Young about finding God. [8] Mettler also visits the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship Church who chant, dance and roll on the floor of an airport hangar where they believe Jesus once visited. [7] [9] In the next segment petroglyphs and snakes are observed in Monument Valley in Southwestern United States, [10] and time is spent in Las Vegas, where gamblers are scrutinized at their slot machines and poker tables. Here Mettler also interviews a sex toy salesman who promises clients a "non-chemical induced illusion of their fantasy" with his orgasmatron (sex chair) and other devices. [4] [9] [10]

In the third segment, Mettler interviews the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD, Albert Hofmann, who, according to a later recounting of the meeting by Mettler, "felt Timothy Leary was both overly flamboyant and overly simplified, and the resultant publicity made further medical research impossible." [11] Hofmann also explains his theory of "horizontal genetics" which suggests that human individuality does not exist. [4] [5] In Zürich Mettler interviews a couple addicted to heroin, [10] visits "poodle racers" and a techno rave. [4] [7] [9] The last segment is filmed in Bombay (now Mumbai), and in Hampi, former capital of the ancient Vijayanagara Empire in Southern India. The scenes here include following a pilgrimage ceremony that culminates in darśana ("looking at a deity"), [10] and a visit to the Bombay Laughing Club where members find solace in laughing and making faces at one another. [7]

Background

Mettler came to prominence in 1982 when the Toronto Festival of Festivals screened his first full-length film, Scissere. He started contemplating Gambling, Gods and LSD in 1988, but it was only after he finished Picture of Light in 1994 that he started working on the project full-time. [7] Filming began in late 1997 and finished in early 1999. [9] Mettler usually travelled on his own, doing all the interviewing, camera work and directing himself, with the occasional help of locals in some of the cities. He spent close to two years on the road, and said that no retakes were done and no multi-camera setups were used. [7] The film was unscripted—Mettler said, "[it] was making itself while I acted as a medium". [12]

Mettler approached Gambling, Gods and LSD with four themes in mind: "transcendence, the denial of death, our relationship to nature and the illusion of safety". [12] He investigated the fringe cultures of Toronto, Las Vegas, Zurich and Southern India, and said the film is about finding what people's addictions are, what they do to escape reality and give meaning to their lives. Mettler said this endeavor turned out to be his own escape and addiction. [8]

Mettler began editing the film in early 1999 outside Zurich with Roland Schlimme ( Manufactured Landscapes , Act of God ). More than 50 hours of film, and hundreds of hours of video were shot to produce the final three-hour cut, which he said was like "composing a piece of music". [7] Fifty-two hours of assembled edit was unreleased, from which Mettler believes another film could be culled. [7]

Gambling, Gods and LSD does not conform to any of the traditional documentary genres. Mettler said that the film "is in part about the breaking down of categories or prejudices ... It invites the viewer to go on a journey, to actively participate in the making of meaning and the opening of senses ... [and] make associations between what they see and their own personal experience". [7] The title of the film came from a list of peak experiences, addictions and escapes he had been investigating. [11] Mettler has cited Andrei Tarkovsky and Michelangelo Antonioni as film directors who have influenced him. [4]

Reception

Stephen Lan, writing in Take One: Film & Television in Canada , commended director Mettler's "three-hour epic" for making viewers "think for themselves". Lan described Gambling, Gods and LSD as a "visual and aural enigma" and said that it is "boldly unique" because of its elusiveness, prompting audiences to form their own interpretations and decide for themselves what the film is all about. He said that in spite of the film's "elliptical non-narrative structure" and "multiplicity of layers", it does not feel longer than most feature-length films, and "deserves ... several viewings, each bound to provide drastically new and different insights". [7]

In a review of the film at Montreal's 2002 Festival du nouveau cinéma (where it won the "Best Documentary Award"), Donato Totaro said Gambling, Gods and LSD is a "fragmented narrative" and "a modern variant of the wonderful, old tradition of the city film". He compared the film to Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov), Koyaanisqatsi (1982, Godfrey Reggio) and Baraka (1992, Ron Fricke). [4]

In Exclaim! , Michelle Devereaux called the film a "heady, transfixing meditation on the idea of meditation and transcendence itself". [9] While Time Out found the film "a little pretentious", it said it is "compelling, exhilarating, funny, imaginative and ... wise". [5] Jamie Russell at BBC Online said the film is "agonisingly tedious viewing" and that it "mimics the mind-altering, flattened out monotony of an acid trip". He complained that the point of the film's "unrelated segments" are never explained, and felt that the nature shots separating these segments are "nothing but marking time for the sake of it". [6]

Awards

Source: Swiss Films [1]

Soundtrack

Gambling, Gods and LSD
GamblingGods&LSD albumcover.jpg
Soundtrack album by
Various artists
Released2003 (2003)
Genre
Length61:08
Label Maximage (Switzerland)
Producer Peter Mettler

A soundtrack of Gambling, Gods and LSD by various artists and produced by Peter Mettler was released on CD in 2003. The editing and remixing was done by Mettler and Peter Bräker. [13]

Fred Frith's contributions to the album are extracts and remixes from "Gambling, Gods and LSD", a piece he composed and performed for Mettler; Frith released it on his 2004 solo album, Eye to Ear II . [14] Frith had previously composed and performed the soundtrack for Mettler's 1989 film, The Top of His Head . [15]

Track listing

Part 1
No.TitleArtistLength
1."The River" Fred Frith, Peter Bräker6:23
2."The Church"Bräker2:01
3."The Flight"Knut & Silvy, Frith2:29
Part 2
No.TitleArtistLength
1."Desert Rain"Unknown0:49
2."Las Vegas" Third Eye Foundation, Jim O'Rourke, Bräker, Dimitri De Perrot6:51
3."Eva" Tony Coe 3:22
4."Implosion"Koch-Schütz-Studer (with DJ M. Singe & DJ I-Sound), De Perrot, O'Rourke2:07
5."Dust"Knut & Silvy2:53
Part 3
No.TitleArtistLength
1."Over There" Henryk Górecki, Frith3:30
2."Swiss Miniature"Bräker, Frith1:48
3."Splugen" Fennesz 4:14
4."Waterclock"Bräker, Fennesz4:32
5."Life Goes Off"O'Rourke4:04
Part 4
No.TitleArtistLength
1."Zurich, Arattu"Frith6:51
2."Jet Set"Bräker4:12
3."Backwaters"Frith5:02

Source: Soundtrack liner notes. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingrid Veninger</span> Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter

Ingrid Veninger is a Canadian actress, writer, director, producer, and film professor at York University. Veninger began her career in show business as a child actor in commercials and on television; as a teen, she was featured in the CBC series Airwaves (1986–1987) and the CBS series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987–1990). In the 1990s, she branched out into producing, and, in 2003, she founded her own production company, pUNK Films, through which she began to work on her own projects as a writer and director.

The Top of His Head is a 1989 Canadian comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Mettler. The film stars starring Stephen Ouimette as Gus, a satellite dish salesman whose life is turned upside down when he meets Lucy, a politically radical performance artist who is on the run from mysterious people pursuing her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Frith discography</span>

Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings. This is a selection from bands he was/is a member of, collaborations with other bands and musicians, and his solo recordings. The year indicates when the album was first released. For a comprehensive discography, see the Discography of Fred Frith by Michel Ramond, Patrice Roussel and Stephane Vuilleumier.

Jubal Brown is a video producer and multi-media artist based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He gained notoriety in 1996 when he deliberately vomited primary colours on paintings in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

<i>Step Across the Border</i> 1990 film by Nicolas Humbert

Step Across the Border is a 1990 avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith. It was written and directed by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel and released in Germany and Switzerland. The film was screened in cinemas in North America, South America, Europe and Japan, and on television in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France. It was also released on VHS by RecRec Music (Switzerland) in 1990, and was later released on DVD by Winter & Winter Records (Germany) in 2003.

<i>The Top of His Head</i> (soundtrack) 1989 soundtrack album by Fred Frith

The Top of His Head is a soundtrack by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith, of the 1989 Canadian comedy-drama film, The Top of His Head. Frith wrote and composed all the music, with the exception of "This Old Earth", which was written and sung by Jane Siberry, and a cover of "The Way You Look Tonight". The music was recorded at l'Office National du Film, Montreal, Quebec, Canada in August and September 1988, and was released on LP and CD in 1989 by the Belgian independent label, Crammed Discs. The CD release contained two extra tracks, "Driving to the Train" and "The Long Drive".

<i>Eye to Ear II</i> 2004 studio album by Fred Frith

Eye to Ear II is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It is a collection of film music composed and performed by Frith, and is the second of three Eye to Ear albums dedicated to his work for short films. It was recorded in Germany and the United States between 1997 and 2003.

The Art of Woo is a 2001 Canadian romantic comedy film written and directed by Helen Lee and starring Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Beach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2002 Toronto International Film Festival</span>

The 27th Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5 to September 17 and screened 343 films from 50 countries. Of these 263 were feature films, of which 141 were in a language other than English. The ten-day festival opened with Atom Egoyan's Ararat and closed with Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Mettler</span> Canadian film director and cinematographer

Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer. He is best known for his unique, intuitive approach to documentary, evinced by such films as Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), and The End of Time (2012). "His peripatetic lens is ever gravitating toward outsiders in search of ecstatic states", writes José Teodoro in Brick, "strange spectacles that defy straightforward documentation, and sacred places that promise some metaphysical deliverance. There are precedents for his methodologies—the films of Chris Marker and Werner Herzog come to mind—but Mettler’s gifts as an open and unobtrusive interviewer and his capacity to discover shared sensibilities between people of vastly diverse cultures and creeds feels singular."

Helen Lee is a Korean-Canadian film director. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she emigrated to Canada at the age of four and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario. Interested in film at a young age, she took film studies at the University of Toronto and, later, New York University. While in university she was influenced by gender and minority theories, as reflected in her first film, the short Sally's Beauty Spot (1990). While continuing her studies she produced two more films before taking a five-year hiatus to live in Korea beginning in 1995. After her return, she released another short film and her feature film debut, The Art of Woo (2001). She continues to produce films, although at a reduced rate. Lee's films often deal with gender and racial issues, reflecting the state of East Asians in modern society; a common theme in her work is sexuality, with several films featuring interracial relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Hoolboom</span> Canadian filmmaker

Michael Hoolboom is a Canadian independent, experimental filmmaker. Having begun filmmaking at an early age, Hoolboom released his first major work, a "film that's not quite a film" entitled White Museum, in 1986. Although he continued to produce films, his rate of production improved drastically after he was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 or 1989; this gave a "new urgency" to his works. Since then he has made dozens of films, two of which have won Best Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. His films have also featured in more than 200 film festivals worldwide.

<i>Franks Cock</i> 1993 short film by Mike Hoolboom

Frank's Cock is a 1993 Canadian short film written and directed by Mike Hoolboom. The eight-minute production stars Callum Keith Rennie as an unnamed narrator who discusses his relationship with his partner, Frank. The two met while the narrator was a teenager and spent nearly ten years together. Frank has since been diagnosed with AIDS, and the narrator fears his death. The story was based on the experience of one of Hoolboom's friends at People With AIDS, which Hoolboom adapted after receiving a commission to create a short film about breaking up.

Letters from Home is a 15-minute-long short film by Canadian director Mike Hoolboom. It follows a multitude of figures from the Toronto art community who deliver messages about living with AIDS, which are spliced with home videos, found and archive footage, and other film techniques. Letters from Home was generally well received and won several awards, including Best Canadian Short Film at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival.

<i>The End of Time</i> (2012 film) 2012 film

The End of Time is a 2012 Swiss-Canadian documentary film written and directed by Peter Mettler on the loose subject of time.

The Toronto New Wave refers to a loose-knit group of filmmakers from Toronto who came of age during the 1980s and early 1990s.

<i>Picture of Light</i> 1994 film

Picture of Light is a 1994 Canada-Switzerland poetic documentary film by Peter Mettler. It was filmed in Churchill, Manitoba on two trips in 1991 and again in 1992. It is one of the key films of the Toronto New Wave.

<i>Metronome</i> (film) 2002 experimental short film

Metronome is a 2002 Canadian short experimental film which mixes appropriated film clips and video by video artist Daniel Cockburn to express ideas about rhythm and order, the self and other minds, and the digital age. Densely philosophical, the work is acknowledged as his international "breakout hit" after several locally successful short works, winning praise from critics, a mention, and an award.

<i>The Other Shoe</i> (film) 2001 experimental short film

The Other Shoe is a 2001 Canadian short experimental film by video artist Daniel Cockburn, his third, which, along with Metronome (2002), earned a mention for the Homebrew Award when shown at the Images Festival and thereby broadened his reputation beyond Toronto.

Roland Schlimme is a Canadian film editor known in particular for his work with filmmakers Peter Mettler and Jennifer Baichwal. He's also worked on several projects with artists Phillip Barker and Laura Taler as well as filmmakers Alison Murray and Cliff Caines.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Gambling, Gods and LSD". Swiss Films. Retrieved 19 April 2012.
  2. 1 2 "Gambling, Gods and LSD: Full cast and crew". Internet Movie Database . Retrieved 19 April 2012.
  3. "Cast list for Gambling, Gods and LSD". Time Out . Archived from the original on 4 February 2013. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totaro, Donato (31 December 2002). "FCMM 2002: Fragmented Visions". Off Screen. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 "Gambling, Gods And LSD". Time Out . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  6. 1 2 Russel, Jamie (21 January 2004). "Gambling, Gods And LSD". BBC Online . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Lan, Stephen (1 September 2002). "In search of wonder: Peter Mettler's Gambling, Gods and LSD". Take One: Film & Television in Canada . Archived from the original on 24 February 2016. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  8. 1 2 Hoolboom 2008, p. 105.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Devereaux, Michelle (February 2003). "Gambling, Gods And LSD". Exclaim! . Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Hoolboom 2008, p. 107.
  11. 1 2 Hoolboom 2008, p. 109.
  12. 1 2 Hoolboom 2008, p. 104.
  13. 1 2 Gambling, Gods and LSD soundtrack liner notes.
  14. Westergaard, Sean. "Eye to Ear II". AllMusic.com. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  15. Mills, Ted. "The Top of His Head". AllMusic.com. Retrieved 4 May 2012.

Cited works