Peter Whitehead
1937 - 2019Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts
Peter Whitehead
Samantha Berger, Alice Schneider
Adapting its title and theme from Thomas De Quincey's murder text, this long-overdue return to narrative cinema by the great British filmmaker Peter Whitehead is based around a mesmerizing psycho-geographical exploration of modern day Vienna. The film incorporates a record of the subversive underbelly of the city into a poetic meditation on conspiracy theory, ecoterrorism, time and cinema, retracing the story of The Third Man. Adapted from a trilogy of Whitehead's own Nohzone novels, the objective and subjective becomes blurred as the film director merges with the fictional detective in a journey into the murky activities of covert counter-insurgency groups. Kaleidoscopic in intent, the film mixes Noh theatre, Victorian novels, Vienna after the war, opium, domain names and Jacob's ladder "pitched twixt Heaven and Charring Cross".
Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts
The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling - Ireland 1965
Peter Whitehead, Mick Gochanour
Mick Jagger, Brian Jones
A documentary on the Rolling Stones that was shot in 1965 on a two-stop tour of Ireland, just as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was becoming a worldwide sensation.
The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling - Ireland 1965
Charlie Is My Darling
Peter Whitehead
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
Charlie Is My Darling, directed by Peter Whitehead, was the first documentary film about The Rolling Stones. The movie was shot during the band's two-day tour of Ireland on 3 and 4 September 1965, and was completed in the spring of 1966. It received only spotty release in 1966 before being withdrawn, and has seldom been seen since then.
Charlie Is My Darling
The Fall
Peter Whitehead
Peter Whitehead, Alberta Tiburzi
"The Fall" depicts certain scenes in New York City between October 1967 and March 1968, shot by the independent filmmaker, Peter Whitehead. It is a very personal documentary, and Whitehead appears in a large number of scenes, and we hear his lengthy ruminations on the state of the United States and the war in Vietnam.
The Fall
The Falconer
Chris Petit, Iain Sinclair
Kathy Acker, Steven Dilworth
Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair's liminal, laminal tribute to underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, featuring image manipulation by Dave Mckean & reminiscences from various countercultural characters. A fitting epitaph for an English margin walker.
The Falconer
Tonite Let's All Make Love in London
Peter Whitehead
Vashti Bunyan, Michael Caine
Peter Whitehead’s disjointed Swinging London documentary, subtitled “A Pop Concerto,” comprises a number of different “movements,” each depicting a different theme underscored by music: A early version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” accompanies a young woman’s description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic “Changing of the Guard” to shots of Buckingham Palace’s changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) – and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O’Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones’ 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.
Tonite Let's All Make Love in London
The Benefit of the Doubt
Peter Whitehead
Peter Brook, Ian Hogg
A documentary following US, Peter Brook's experimental play about the moral issues surrounding the Vietnam War, Benefit of the Doubt is the only known film record of the Royal Shakespeare Company production. It was filmed by Peter Whitehead concurrently with his Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967), on the surface a very different film, yet both share a central concern with the war, protest and Britain's political and cultural relationship with America.
The Benefit of the Doubt
Pink Floyd London '66-'67
Peter Whitehead
Syd Barrett, Nick Mason
Shot by movie maestro Peter Whitehead, this film features rare full length performances from the classic late 60's Pink Floyd line-up at Sound Techniques London & material from the legendary '14 hour Technicolor Dream' extravaganza in April '67 at Alexandra Palace.
Pink Floyd London '66-'67
Daddy
Peter Whitehead, Niki de Saint Phalle
Mia Martin, Rainer Diez
Daddy, filmed in cooperation with movie director Peter Whitehead, discovers the connection between a father and little girl. Like the majority of Niki De Saint Phalle’s films, the flick combines autobiography with imagination, mixing erotic scenes of incest with a reverse of energy as the female character humors the daddy figure. Saint Phalle narrates the film, offering an almost psycho-analytical explanation of its content and explains the different inexplicable.
Daddy
Wholly Communion
Peter Whitehead
Gregory Corso, Harry Fainlight
A short film documenting what was referred to as "The International Poetry Incarnation". It was billed as Great Britain's first full-scale "happening", with the world's leading Beat poets together under one roof at the Royal Albert Hall on June 11, 1965, for an evening of near-hallucinatory revelry. It came to be seen as one of the cultural high points of the Swinging Sixties.
Wholly Communion
Jeanetta Cochrane
Peter Whitehead
Nico
More consciously experimental than Whitehead's other works, this film draws on a variety of sources, including sequences of London shot while Whitehead was at the Slade School of Art, glimpses of the singer and model Nico, and footage of the psychedelic underground nightclub UFO. There is also on-screen text, a voice critiquing it, and music from Pink Floyd, at this point still fronted by Syd Barrett--Whitehead's old painting friend from Cambridge. The track here, "Interstellar Overdrive", was recorded by Whitehead before the band signed to EMI and is much more exciting and beat-driven than the version they would later record for the label. There is no explicit link between the content of the film and the Cochrane Theatre, which is is named after, but the theatre was used as a venue for the Spontaneous Festival of Underground Films in 1966.
Jeanetta Cochrane
The Perception Of Life
Peter Whitehead, June Goodfield
Stephen Toulmin
An extraordinarily beautiful and simple science film about the history of biological ideas that shows how they expanded as technology improved. Filmed in museums and in the Cambridge University labs where Whitehead had been a student, THE PERCEPTION OF LIFE was filmed through microscopes used by scientists from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including the electron microscope in the MRC unit where Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA.
The Perception Of Life
Lilford Hall
Peter Whitehead, Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger, Susanka Fraey
In 1969, Penny Slinger and her then partner filmmaker Peter Whitehead were given permission to produce a body of work in Lilford Hall, a decaying mansion in Northamptonshire, England. Shot over the course of several weeks while living in the estate with actress Suzanka Fraey (The Other Side of the Underneath), Lilford Hall documents the fractured intimacy between the three artists.
Lilford Hall
