Canadian/Swiss filmmaker Peter Mettler's goal of filming the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the northern lights, is both a quest, a visual symphony and an extended metaphor.

The journey begins with a train trip through the blustery snow scape from Winnipeg to Churchill, a community only accessible by rail or plane on the shores of Hudson Bay.

Mettler used time-lapse photography to capture the dancing lights, and among other things, had to work in conditions so extreme, the camera had to be protected against temperatures dropping to minus 40 Celsius.

[3] "On one level, Picture of Light is a quintessential Canadian portrait of a natural world in extremis – a community surviving in a harsh land; a living, breathing, good-natured defiance of the elements; a frigid reminder of the necessity and futility of technology.

Essentially, the film is an accumulation of representations, or pictures of the lights, whether in language, photographic, or video images.