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The Sound of Insects
CH 2008 80'
Director: Peter Liechti
Script: Peter Liechti, Masahiko Shimada
Camera: Peter Liechti
Sound: Balthasar Jucker
Editing: Tania Stöcklin
Music: Norbert Möslang
Production: Peter Liechti
The Sound of Insects
Bericht einer Mumie - Record of a Mumy
Peter Liechti
Swiss Film Prize 2010: Best Film Music
Liechti's film tells the incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of Switzerland. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's documentary is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.
It was the great figure of absence that
decided Peter Liechti to tell the history of a
man of some forty years of age who sought
refuge within a forest, where he decided to
let himself literally die of hunger. Yet, this
person is strangely present through his diary
found beside his corpse, parts of which are
read off screen. We hear the restrained
voices of Peter Mettler for the English version
and of Alexander Tschernek for the
German, recounting the prosaic rather than
philosophical (!) details of this freely
accepted martyrdom. The man actually
existed in Japan, where writer Shimada
Masahiko was inspired by the diary to tell a
story that Peter Liechti made the basis of his
film.
From then on, a symphony of sounds and
images must be imagined, which have been
employed in order to outline the everyday
life of this man. The forest has the apparel
of a constantly active universe, beaten by
the winds and storms, burnt by the sun, and
inhabited by thousands of birds and insects
that make up a terribly living picture. The
cabin, hung with transparent sheeting, is
filmed like a haunted house. The camera
observes, moves, changes viewpoints, and
captures the states of light and the infinite
movements of nature, whose memory
(doubtlessly?) retains some traces of the
man, who has now disappeared. This does
not concern a subjective point of view that
would replace the man in seeking to guide
the spectator, but rather a quest for the
metaphysical dimension of the story. What
can the cinema of men accomplish at the
very place where this life was engulfed
within the heart of an abundant nature?
One must listen to and regard this forest,
which thus acquires a mythological character.
And then will arise some gusts of
images, fragmentary reminiscences, faces,
silhouettes, phantoms from another world –
including this white horse – that signal those
shipwrecked by life. Peter Liechti is the
inspired architect of this meditative and hallucinatory
area constructed by the film.With
us, he wishes to believe that the cinema may
be this magnificent magical link between the
living and the dead.
Visions du Réel Nyon 2009
Peter Liechti
* 1951 in St.Gallen. Studies of Art History at the University of Zurich. Zurich College of Art and Design, diploma in teaching drawing. Since 1986 freelance work in films as scriptwriter, director, producer and cameraman.
2008 THE SOUND OF INSECTS
2006 HARDCORE CHAMBERMUSIC
2004 NAMIBIA CROSSINGS
2003 HANS IM GLÜCK
1997 MARTHAS GARTEN
1996 SIGNERS KOFFER
1990 ROMAN SIGNER, ZÜNDSCHNUR
1990 GRIMSEL
1989 KICK THAT HABIT
1987 TAUWETTER
1987 THEATRE DE L'ESPERANCE
1987 Drei Kunsteditionen zu Roman Signer
1986 AUSFLUG INS GEBIRG
1985 SENKRECHT, WAAGRECHT
1984 SOMMERHÜGEL
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