Grades 10-12, College, Adult
Directed by Peter Mettler
Produced by Rhombus Media with Hauer Rawlence Productions
DVD Purchase $79, Rent $45
US Release Date: 1994
Copyright Date: 1992
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-847-3
VHS ISBN: 1-56029-578-3
Subjects
Canadian Studies
Humanities
Performing Arts
Theater
Awards and Festivals
Christopher Columbus Award, Most Original and Creative of the Festival, Columbus International Film & Video Festival
Most Innovative, Figueira da Foz International Film Festival, Portugal
Carrefour International De Theatre de Quebec
Festival of Festivals, Toronto
Festival International du Nouveau Cinema et de la Video, Montreal
International Film Festivals: Vancouver, Vienna, Mannheim, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Jerusalem, Input93
Adaptation-integration of the stage play by Robert Lepage.
 |
"...No other film in history has created a visual and emotional parallel between a planet-sized geological concept and a person-sized romantic trauma." The Toronto Sun |
The geology of continental drift becomes a metaphor for the evolution of human culture in this unusual drama, which won critical raves as a stage play in London, Glasgow, Montreal and Ottawa. An art student in Venice meets an array of characters who, twenty years later, form the inspiration for her paintings. Moving between actual locations in Venice and a sparsely dressed stage that contains a pool mirroring the watery streets of the city, TECTONIC PLATES is dreamlike in its imagery, theatrical in its staging, and philosophical in its ideas.
This audacious metaphor linking human actions with geologic forces provides the insight and power in this "adaptation-integration" of the Theatre Repere stage production of Robert Lepage's Tectonic Plates.
Reviews
"It is a bizarre understatement to call Peter Mettler's experimental film. TECTONIC PLATES merely unique. No other film in history has created a visual and emotional parallel between a planet-sized geological concept and a person-sized romantic trauma."
The Toronto Sun
"Mettler carries off the film with a combination of unforgettable images, artful performances and a kind of inexorable intelligence that guides his working out of the theme."
Now Magazine