While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts

Description

The Stadtkino Basel invites you to a unique experience of time: Over several years, Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler has developed his transcultural film diary While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts (2025). The epic result is a seven-hour meditation on the relationship between cosmos and detail, present and memory, beauty and transience. Just as Mettler's hypnotic stream of images brings together distant elements, this event is designed as a collective all-day experience: Around the screening, there will be opportunities for refreshments – food and drinks – at the bar. Mettler himself will be present to engage in conversation with you and us. Peter Mettler's seven-part diary, which will be shown in two blocks with a break, moves between cultures. The canton of Appenzell and Canada, La Gomera and Cuba, Arizona and New Mexico come closer together. The most important protagonist of this journey becomes the nomadic camera itself, in whose consciousness the abundance of moments and encounters transforms into a cosmopolitan reflection on life, the fleetingness, and the significance of death (Mettler's parents). Distant places, people, and moments begin to transform each other and become a community of images and sounds that, despite transience, continues to live on in the audience. Contributors and additional information: CH, CA 2025 420 min. Color. DCP. E/SP/D Director: Peter Mettler Writer: Peter Mettler Cinematography: Peter Mettler Editing: Jordan Kawai, Peter Mettler Featuring: Peter Brugger, Grant Lacquement, Alfred Mettler