Gambling, Gods and LSD

Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002)

Filmmaker Peter Mettler embarks on a mission that takes him around the world. He is determined to record the diverse modes of transcendence that people in different cultures adopt in order to live life to the fullest. As he traverses civilization and wilderness and encounters a range of lifestyles and ideas, the filmmaker's mind-expanding trip around the world grows into a poem of images and sounds, reflecting the fragmented but alluring worlds it attempts to capture.

Date of release
2002-09-08
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (16)
Runtime
3h 0m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Peter Mettler

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Toronto, Switzerland, and Las Vegas Valley

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" that shows what people do to discover themselves and find happiness.

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. Filming began in late 1997 and finished in early 1999.

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". 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.

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". Fifty-two hours of assembled edit was unreleased, from which Mettler believes another film could be culled.

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".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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