Thomas Riedelsheimer is a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor whose body of work has explored a multitude of subjects. He especially enjoys working with artists and has developed his own style with an emphasis on poetic visual storytelling. His documentary Rivers and Tides (2001) enjoyed huge international success. Alongside the latter and Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie (2004), Riedelsheimer’s latest film Tracing Light [+lee también:
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Cineuropa: You’ve made a number of portrait documentaries about artists and their work, and sometimes you go into the material side of things. This time, you’re trying to capture the concept of light, which isn’t only essential to the art of cinema, but to art in general and our perception of life. What was the starting point for your journey?
Thomas Riedelsheimer: As a cameraman, I’m fascinated by the ephemeral beauty of light, and I actually started a film project about light back in 2006. The process came to a standstill for various reasons, but it came back to life in 2019 when I read a book about the time both Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso started to look at the world with fresh eyes and introduced abstraction to science and art. I also learned that investigations into the nature of light led science into the amazing world of particles and quantum mechanics. So light was back on the table, and I liked the idea of looking at light from the perspective of science and art.

The material and the metaphysical components of light are nicely balanced in your film. Was this hard to achieve? Which of these interested you the most in the various stages of the creative process?
I don’t think light is a material in the way we would normally understand the latter. It doesn’t have regular mass and weight. So the material and metaphysical components are hard to separate. But I was clearly interested in the more philosophical aspects of light’s properties. The fact that light changes its character when it’s watched, for example. Or the whole notion of time that’s based on the ultimate speed: the speed of light.

Were you already clear on the structure of your documentary from the outset or did it come to you at a later point?
I had no idea whatsoever of the structure while I was shooting. But that wasn’t new to me. My films don’t have a classical narrative. They’re more of a kaleidoscope of impressions that are subsequently sorted into an order that makes sense and – hopefully – creates a new level of understanding and experience. I know where I want to go with my films and, basically, I try to get a feel for what’s important and what’s not. But the structure comes later on.

How did you strike the balance between the narrative and audio-visual components of storytelling? What role did music play in blending the two?
Finding the right balance is a good way to describe the entire editing process for this film. The hardest thing was to strike a balance with the physical explanations. There aren’t that many in the film, but it doesn’t feel that way because they’re hard to follow and imagine. The problem with light is that language isn’t the right tool to describe it properly. You have to get to the point where you start to enjoy the confusion and awe. Don’t try to understand it with your brain. I guess the images and artworks are really helpful for finding the space and the freedom to do that. And the music, for me, is a really perfect fit. Fred Frith and Gabby Fluke-Mogul did an amazing job with it, and it’s been really hard work to get to this point.

What does light mean to you now, after this long journey? Can it actually be “traced”?
My conclusion – apart from being confused – is probably that light isn’t just a beautiful phenomenon. It’s the language of the universe. It holds all the information about everything from all times within it. But there’s no way to describe it – and no way to make a film about it...