| Penny Woolcock | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1 January 1950 Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Occupation | Screenwriter, Film director |
| Years active | 2000 - Present |
Penny Woolcock (born January 1, 1950, in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a British filmmaker, opera director, and screenwriter. She was raised in a British community in Montevideo, speaking English and going to English schools. Her father, an accountant, had wanted to be a writer. In 1967, she founded a radical theatre group and was briefly arrested; her parents wanted to send her to Europe for safety. Instead, she fled to Spain with a man from the theater group and had a baby in Barcelona. In 1970 she moved to England as a single mother. She worked in factories and other jobs. In her thirties she enrolled in a filmmakers' workshop, borrowed film-making equipment, and sold the resulting feature to BBC Channel 4. She then was hired as a director and editor of a current-affairs program originating in Newcastle. From there, she went on to feature-making. Her first feature as a writer and director was "Women in Tropical Places" in 1989. Since then she has directed/ written seven films.
Her Breakthrough film was Tina Goes Shopping, which was a collaborative piece with the real residents of the Gipton estates in Leeds, which was part of what is now known as the Tina Trilogy. Current projects include 1 Day, a film scheduled for 2009 release, and a production of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic, which she is directing for the Metropolitan Opera's 2008-2009 season. She previously filmed Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer as a feature film. Penny Woolcock most recent film is 1 Day.[1]
Directed and adapted Macbeth on the estate 1997.