"Cinque Terre is the designation for a string of towns dotting the northern Mediterranean coast of Italy. Filmmaker Ken Kobland was invited to spend a few weeks there in November 2004, and Ideas of Order in Cinque Terre is the result of his brief love affair with the landscape of the place. Concentrating on line, geometry, and tones of sound and color, Kobland has crafted a powerful, abstract homage to a little piece of paradise." — Tribeca Film Festival, 2006.

Writes Kobland: "In November of 2004 I was invited to spend a couple of weeks in Cinque Terre, (a string of towns along the Northern Mediterranean Italian coast). The area has been list as a World Heritage Site, by UNESCO, because of its exquisite coastline and the hill towns which cluster on its rocks. Indeed, one is easily overwhelmed by the place, the extraordinary beauty of the light, and color, the geometry of the towns and the incredible way humans have inhabited the landscape. Of particular beauty to me was the train line, that runs directly along the edge of the water and passes like a needle and thread through the mountains. Line, geometry and tones (both sound and color), became for me the abstract power of the place. And this is what I tried to relate in my film..."