Peter Wollen
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Peter Wollen was born in London on 29 June 1938 and studied English at Christchurch College, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, first published in 1969, helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodologies of structuralism and semiotics.
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[edit] Filmography
Wollen's first film credit was as co-writer of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (Professione: Reporter, Italy, 1975) and he made his debut as a director with Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), the first of six films co-written and co-directed with his wife, Laura Mulvey. The low-budget Penthesilea portrayed women's language and mythology as silenced by patriarchal structures. Acknowledging the influence of Jean-Luc Godard's Le Gai Savoir (France, 1968), Wollen intended the film to fuse avant-garde and radically political elements. The resultant work is innovative in the context of British cinema history, although unsurprisingly its relentlessly didactic approach did not make for mass appeal.
For Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), their most remarkable collaborative work, Wollen and Mulvey obtained a BFI Production Board grant, which enabled them to work with greater technical resources. Rewriting the Oedipal myth from a female standpoint, they use formal devices, such as their impressively choreographed circular pans, to create an expressionist effect which complicates and enhances the film's narrative content.
The deliberately ahistorical AMY! (1980), commemorating Amy Johnson's solo flight from Britain to Australia, synthesises themes previously covered by Wollen and Mulvey. In Crystal Gazing (1982) formal experimentation is muted and narrative concerns emphasised. The film was criticised in some quarters for the absence of an explicitly feminist perspective, but it enjoyed generally favourable reviews. Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), a short film tied to an international art exhibition curated by Wollen, and The Bad Sister (1982), a drama based on a novel by Emma Tennant, were the final projects on which Wollen and Mulvey collaborated.
Wollen's only solo feature, Friendship's Death (1987), was the bizarre and absorbing story of the relationship between a British war correspondent and a female extraterrestrial robot on a peace mission to Earth, who, missing her intended destination of MIT, lands inadvertently in Amman, Jordan during the events of 'Black September' 1970. The film's intelligent wit, coupled with outstanding performances from Tilda Swinton and Bill Paterson, makes this Wollen's most compelling film.
Wollen has taught film at a number of universities and is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.
[edit] Bibliography
Electronic Shadows—The Art of Tina Keane, by Peter Wollen, Jean Fisher and Richard Dyer, Black Dog Publishing 2005
Paris / Manhattan—Writings on Art, by Peter Wollen, Verso 2004
Autopia —Cars and Culture, Edited by Peter Wollen and Joe Kerr, Reaktion Books 2003
Paris Hollywood—Writings on Film, by Peter Wollen, Verso 2002
Making Time—Considering Time as a Material in Contemporary Video and Film, by Amy Cappellazzo, Peter Wollen and Adriano Pedrosa Distributed Art Publishers, 2000
Addressing the Century —100 Years of Art and Fashion, by Peter Wollen, University of California Press 1999
Visual Display —Culture Beyond Appearances, Edited by Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen New Press 1999
Who is Andy Warhol? by Colin MacCabe, Mark Francis and Peter Wollen, British Film Institute 1998
Scene of the Crime, Edited by Ralph Rugoff, by Anthony Vidler and Peter Wollen, MIT Press 1997
Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, by Peter Wollen, Expanded and revised edition, London: British Film Institute, 1998
Singin' in the Rain, by Peter Wollen, British Film Institute 1993
Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, by Peter Wollen, London: Secker and Warburg, 1969-1972
[edit] Interviews
Field, Simon, 'Two Weeks on Another Planet', Monthly Film Bulletin 646, 1987, pp. 324-6
Friedman, Lester D., 'Interview with Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey on Riddles of the Sphinx', Millennium Film Journal 4/5, 1979, pp. 14-32
Mulvey, Laura and Wollen, Peter, 'Written Discussion', After Image, July 1976, pp. 31-9
