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Richard Woolley (1948– ) is a British filmmaker, whose films received recognition in the 1970s and 80s. Since 1990 he has primarily concentrated on film-related educational activities, and script and novel writing.

Life

He was educated at London University, where he co-directed a documentary on attitudes to homosexuality in the aftermath of the UK's Sexual Offences Act 1967, and at the Royal College of Art, where he made a series of experimental shorts. He further developed his cinematic skills whilst on a DAAD artist’s bursary in West Berlin, and his two Berlin films - along with a further UK-based film - looked at the relationship of sound and image and the nature of cinematic manipulation in the contexts of 70s Germany (East and West) and 70s Britain. Moving on, in 1978, to incorporate a more conventional narrative style, he made Telling Tales, a film that centred on two couples with opposing interests in an industrial strike. His next film, Brothers and Sisters, made in 1980, at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, centred on the murder of a prostitute and looked at male attitudes to women across the social spectrum. He made two further films, Girl from the South and Waiting for Alan, before retiring as a film director to concentrate on educational activities and writing. In 1990 he set up the Northern School of Film & Television at Leeds Metropolitan University, and in 1992 became the first non-Dutch director of Holland’s national film school, the Netherlands Film and Television Academy. In 1997 he went to Hong Kong to set up a new School of Film & Television for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He remained in Hong Kong for eight years, with just one year back in Holland to set up – and briefly hold – the post of script commissioner or Intendant for the Netherlands Film Fund, when his commissions included scripts for two successful Dutch feature films Minoes (Undercover Kitty (film)) and De Storm. In September 2006 he became inaugural holder of the Greg Dyke Chair of Film & Television at the University of York and the university’s first Professor of Film & Television. Between 1997 and 2000, he was a contributor to the Dutch Film Magazine Skrien and his column ‘Hong Kong Post’ appeared on a monthly basis. He has written three published novels and released two CDs of songs. In the 1970s, in addition to filmmaking, he worked as a performer and musician with the Red Ladder Theatre Company in Leeds.

Reception

Writing in 1977 about the early films, American critic Deke Dusinberre said: "A serious and thorough artist, Woolley’s films collectively encompass all those issues which are at the centre of current critical debate”. Reviewing Telling Tales in Time Out magazine for a 1986 National Film Theatre retrospective, Nigel Pollitt wrote: “A rare chance to see this ambitious and often hilarious drama of class relations and the relative power of narrative forms”. Opinions of Brothers and Sisters ranged from Virginia Dignam's enthusiasm in the UK’s Morning Star newspaper (“[this] is the radical answer to exploitive shock horror films about women and proves that a man can make a truly feminist film”) to the more reticent tone of Andrew Tudor in the UK’s New Society weekly (“I don’t think he has entirely succeeded, but [it] is a far more interesting film than most of what is pumped through our local Odeons.”)

Works

Films:

Girl from the South (1988) Waiting for Alan (1984) Brothers and Sisters (1981) Telling Tales (1978) Illusive Crime (1976) Drinnen und Draussen (Inside and Outside) (1974) Kniephofstrasse (1973) Freedom (1973) Propaganda (1973) Ten Shots (1973) Chromatic (1972) In Between Peace (1972) A Prison Should be Dark (1971) We who have Friends (1970)

Books

Back in 1984 (2010) Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands (2009) Friends & Enemies (2009)

CDs

Double Dutch (2010) Back in 1984 (2009)

External links

• Offical website