In the run-up to the launch of Germany’s most important documentary film festival, Cologne-based world sales New Docs has added Tracing Light by Thomas Riedelsheimer to its slate.
Riedelsheimer’s latest film explores the most fascinating and significant of natural phenomena – light – with leading artists and physicists, as they develop artworks through which the ineffable nature of light is made tangible to our senses.
New Docs will represent the film in all territories worldwide. As this year’s opening film at Dok Leipzig, Tracing Light, produced by the director’s Filmpunkt GmbH and Scots-German filmmaker and producer Sonja Henrici, in association with Leslie Hills of Skyline Productions will have its world premiere in Leipzig on October 28, 2024. The film is supported by Screen Scotland, as well as Germany’s FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, the Federal Commissioner for Arts and Media, the Federal Film Board and 3Sat.
In his new film, Riedelsheimer, best known for his internationally acclaimed, perceptive and sensitive explorations of the borderlines of visual art, music, and science through films such as Rivers and Tides and Leaning Into the Wind (2017) about the land art of Andy Goldsworthy and Touch the Sound (2004) about deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, explores the phenomenon of light from the perspective of artists and scientists, granting us a new and surprising view of a phenomenon we all too often take for granted.
Christoph Terhechte, DOK Leipzig festival director, comments: “Thomas Riedelsheimer's documentaries are a delightful celebration of light and sound. They sharpen our senses. We are proud to be able to open our festival 20 years after “Touch the Sound” with “Tracing Light”.”
For Albert Einstein, the mysterious - that which defies description - was the origin of science and art. His theories and, simultaneously, Pablo Picasso's art, fundamentally changed our understanding of the world. They understood the world to be more magical and complex than is dreamt of. In Tracing Light, science and art come together to illuminate the mysteries of light: light which is the starting point of the journey into abstraction.
Tracing Light brings together leading physicists and artists from Scotland, England and Germany, from the far edge of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides to the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen, in a quest to understand and animate light. Talking about light can seem confusing… well-nigh impossible. The quantum world does not align with our logic or our language and we often reach the limit of our understanding. Tracing Light does not want to propose explanations.
Rather, Thomas Riedelsheimer's images, in combination with the encounters between artists and scientists, aim to open up a space for mystery. This is where the magic and the sensuality of his film begins.
Elina Kewitz, CEO of New Docs, states: “We have always admired Thomas Riedelsheimer’s very special vision of culture and the arts as intrinsically humanistic while at the same time able to reveal something new about the world we live in. We truly believe that this film is for the big screen and we are very happy to help Tracing Light to find the international audience it deserves.”
Sonja Henrici, Producer said: “I've long admired Thomas Riedelsheimer's films for his unique way of looking at the world with kind wonder and so when producer Leslie Hills asked me to work on his new film about Light I said yes! I look forward to seeing the film delight audiences all over the world.”