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Damian Pettigrew

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cinema Damian Pettigrew (born in Quebec) is a Canadian filmmaker and multimedia artist, best known for his cinematic portraits of Balthus and Federico Fellini. He won a Banff Rockie Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for the Prix Arte at the European Film Awards.

Biography

Pettigrew's mother was a child psychologist who trained with Anna Freud at the Hampstead Child Therapy Course in 1947. His father, Dr. J.F. Pettigrew, was the first Canadian surgeon to diagnose the heart condition known as aortic coarctation in 1953.

After reading English, French and Italian Literature at the universities of Bishop's, Oxford, and Glasgow (where he discovered the work of Scottish film director Bill Douglas), Pettigrew studied cinema at IDHEC in Paris. At the Cinémathèque française, he met Brion Gysin and Steve Lacy and began frequenting their artists' circle. If his work is influenced by Gysin's celebrated cut-up technique, the profound and lasting effect on his life was his friendship with Samuel Beckett. After Beckett's death in 1989, he settled in Paris to devote himself to filmmaking (in particular, writing, directing and editing). [1]

A recognized authority on Federico Fellini, his portrait of the maestro, Fellini: I'm a Born Liar, won the prestigious Rockie Award at the 2002 Banff World Television Festival, receiving excellent reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek International, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, l'Unità, The Herald (Glasgow), The Telegraph (London), and newspapers throughout Europe, Brazil, Australia and Japan. Nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards, Europe's equivalent of the Oscars, the film established his reputation as a director of "extraordinarily controlled" feature documentaries. [2]

Pettigrew's films include portraits of Eugène Ionesco, Italo Calvino, and Moebius. His acclaimed study of Balthus was filmed in Super 16 over a 12-month period in Switzerland, Italy, France and the Moors of England. Highly-esteemed by Guy Davenport, [3] it screened in September 2007 at the Museum Ludwig (Cologne, Germany) in a cycle of film classics by Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, and Jean Vigo.

Currently, he is directing two major documentaries for ARTE France. The first, a new portrait of Italo Calvino based on in-depth conversations filmed at the novelist's penthouse in Piazza Campo Marzio (Rome) in 1983. Also featured is a unique recording of Calvino reading from his last novel, Mr. Palomar, taped by Pettigrew on the writer's terrace. The second is a study of the European and Yiddish cabaret tradition leading up to and during the Second World War as experienced by French stars Irene and Bernard Hilda.

In development are two feature fictions: Darkness Visible starring Tim Roth, and Sam & Me, based on the director's experience working with Samuel Beckett.

Selected Filmography

See also

Awards

UNESCO Grand Prize - Best Documentary

  • 1996, for Balthus Through the Looking Glass

Lausanne International Festival of Art Films - Best Photography Prize

  • 1996, for Balthus Through the Looking Glass

European Film Awards Prix Arte Nomination - Best Documentary

  • 2003, for Fellini: I'm a Born Liar

Marseille International Film Festival Award - Coup de Coeur

  • 2003, for Fellini: I'm a Born Liar

Banff World Television Festival Rockie Award - Best Arts Documentary

  • 2003, for Fellini: I'm a Born Liar

Member, The Society of Multimedia Authors of France (SCAM) and The Society of Authors of France (SGDL)

Publications

This bibliography is focused on the published interviews that were filmed, produced and directed by Pettigrew in collaboration with the following artists:

  • Fellini, Federico:
    • Fellini, je suis un grand menteur (1994). L'Arche (ISBN 2851813404).
    • Fellini, Ich bin ein großer Lügner (1995). Verlag der Autoren (ISBN 3886611566).
    • 'Fellini: Creation and the Artist' in Projections 4 (1995) Faber and Faber (ISBN 0-571-17363-2).
    • 'Fellini et l'entretien avec Damian Pettigrew' in Cahiers Jungiens de Psychanalyse. (Issue 104, 2002).
    • Fellini, sono un gran bugiardo. Prefazione di Tullio Kezich. (2003) Elleu (ISBN 8874761228).
    • I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon. Preface by Tullio Kezich. (2003) Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (ISBN 0-8109-4617-3).

Notes and references

  1. ^ Part of his correspondence with the Irish novelist and playwright is archived at Emory University in Atlanta, home to the Beckett Correspondence Project under the direction of Lois Overbeck and Martha Fehsenfeld.
  2. ^ David Denby, The New Yorker, April 21, 2003. Based on the maestro's last interviews filmed by Pettigrew in 1991-1992 (Fellini died in 1993), the film was selected in over 40 international festivals including Edinburgh, Moscow, Amsterdam, Cannes and Montréal, distributed theatrically in 15 countries, and sold to television worldwide (source: MK2 International). As a companion to the film, the interview transcripts were published by Abrams (New York) in 2003 and lavishly illustrated.
  3. ^ Davenport was an early shaping influence on the film and contributed valuable insight in a series of letters to Pettigrew between 1995-6. Their correspondence is archived at L'Arche éditeur (Paris) under the direction of Rudolf Rach. See also Davenport's A Balthus Notebook (New York: Ecco Press, 1989) for a seminal essay on the French artist's work.
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