Damian Pettigrew

Damian Pettigrew
Born	Damian (Damien) Pettigrew Québec, Canada
Occupation	filmmaker, screenwriter, author
Years active	1982 - present
Height	188 cm (00 in)
Awards	UNESCO Grand Prize - Best Documentary 1997 Balthus Through the Looking Glass Lausanne IFAF Prize - Best Photography 1997 Balthus Through the Looking Glass Prix Arte Nomination - Best Documentary 2003 Fellini: I'm a Born Liar Marseille IFF Award - Coup de Coeur 2003 Fellini: I'm a Born Liar Banff World Television Festival Rockie Award - Best Arts Documentary 2003 Fellini: I'm a Born Liar

Damian (also Damien) Pettigrew (born in Quebec) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, author, 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, Europe's equivalent of the Oscars.

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.^[1]

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).^[2]

In 1999, Pettigrew founded the film production company, Portrait et Compagnie, with French producer Olivier Gal. He spends a short part of each year on Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.^[3]

Work

Fellini on film set (1992)

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, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek International, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, l'Unità, The Herald, 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.^[4]

Balthus on film set (1996)

Other films include portraits of Eugène Ionesco, Italo Calvino, and Jean Giraud. His Balthus Through the Looking Glass, a study of the controversial French painter, was filmed in Super 16 over a 12-month period in Switzerland, Italy, France and the Moors of England. Esteemed by Guy Davenport,^[5] it was honored in a cycle of film classics by Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, and Jean Vigo at the Museum Ludwig (Cologne, Germany) in September 2007.^[6]

In 2010, Pettigrew directed MetaMoebius, a cinematic essay on French graphic designer Moebius aka Jean Giraud for the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain and CinéCinéma Classic. His documentary, The Irene Hilda Story, based on the European cabaret tradition during the Second World War as experienced by French stars Irene and Bernard Hilda, was broadcast in France and Germany by ARTE France that same year.^[7]

He recently completed Inside Italo (Lo specchio di Calvino), a feature-length study of Italo Calvino for ARTE France in co-production with Italy’s Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali^[8] and the National Film Board of Canada.^[9] Starring Neri Marcorè as the famous Italian writer, the docu-fiction uses in-depth conversations filmed at Calvino's Rome penthouse a year before his death in 1985 and rare footage from RAI, BBC, and INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel) television archives. The film's theatrical release is slated for 2012.

In development are two feature films: Darkness Visible starring Tim Roth and Eriq Ebouaney,^[10] and Beckett, based on the director's experience working with Samuel Beckett.

Jean Giraud at La Coupole in Paris (2010)

Selected filmography

Writer-Director

• Fellini ou l'amour de la vie (1993)
• Mr Gir et Mike S. Blueberry (1999)
• L'histoire d'Irène / The Irene Hilda Story (2009)
• Fellini : 8½ en Six Mémos (2009)
• Ionesco : Autour du Roi se meurt (2009)
• MetaMoebius : Giraud-Moebius, métamorphoses (2010)
• The Rome Trilogy:
  • Balthus Through the Looking Glass / Balthus de l'autre côté du miroir (1996)
  • Fellini: I'm a Born Liar / Fellini, sono un gran bugiardo / Fellini, je suis un grand menteur (2002)
  • Inside Italo / Lo specchio di Calvino (2011)
• Jean-Jacques Annaud (2012)

Producer

• Ionesco : Conversations autour d'une caméra (Ionesco interviews)
• Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (Fellini interviews)
• Inside Calvino (Calvino interviews)
• Jean-Jacques Annaud (Annaud interviews)

Screenplays

• Darkness Visible (2003 / 2007)
• Les Yeux de ma mâitresse (2005 - funded by the Centre National de la Cinématographie)
• Inside Italo (2010)
• Beckett (2011)

Video art

• 40RO (1985 / 2008)
• Marlène (2008)
• 4 Faces 5 Voices (2008–2010)

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 & Pettigrew, Damian:
  • Fellini, je suis un grand menteur. Paris: L'Arche, 1994 (ISBN 2851813404).
  • Fellini, eu sou um grande mentiroso. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1995.
  • Fellini, Ich bin ein großer Lügner. Munich: Verlag der Autoren, 1995 (ISBN 3886611566).
  • 'Fellini: Creation and the Artist' in Projections 4. London: Faber and Faber, 1995 (ISBN 0-571-17363-2).
  • 'Fellini et l'entretien avec Damian Pettigrew' in Cahiers Jungiens de Psychanalyse. (Paris, Issue 104, 2002.)
  • Fellini, sono un gran bugiardo. Prefazione di Tullio Kezich. Roma: Elleu, 2003 (ISBN 8874761228).
  • I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon. Preface by Tullio Kezich. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003 (ISBN 0-8109-4617-3).
  • Federico Fellini. Sou um grande mentiroso. Uma conversa com Damian Pettigrew. Lisboa: Fim de Século, 2008.

• Calvino, Italo & Pettigrew, Damien:
  • The Paris Review Interviews - The Art of Fiction, No. 130. (Issue 124, Fall 1992).
  • Sogno e delirio. Il Calvino segreto. La Repubblica, September 10, 1995.
  • Uno scrittore pomeridiano. Intervista sull'arte della narrativa a cura di William Weaver e Damien Pettigrew con un ricordo di Pietro Citati. Roma: Minimum fax, 2003 (ISBN 8887765863).

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)

See also

• Art film
• Video art
• Eastern Townships

Notes and references

1. ^ Interview with Pettigrew and Caroline Caldier, Radio France, 4 May 2003.
2. ^ 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.
3. ^ Radio France interview with Pettigrew and Caroline Caldier, accessed 12 August 2011.
4. ^ 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.
5. ^ 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.
6. ^ In Balthus or Time Suspended: Paintings and Drawings (1932-1960). Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2007.
7. ^ Information cited in Arte France. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
8. ^ Information cited in Cinecittà News. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
9. ^ Cited in IRS-RSI News. Retrieved 17 June 2010.
10. ^ Cited in L'Express. Retrieved 19 September 2010.

External links

• Newsweek International Michael J. Agovino: "Directing the Director"
• PopMatters Jonathan Kiefer: "Tales Out of School"
• The New Yorker David Denby: "Monstres sacrés"
• The New York Times A.O. Scott: "Putting Fellini in Front of the Lens"
• St Louis Post-Dispatch Harper Barnes: "A Work of Art"
• ARTE France Federico Fellini et Damian Pettigrew (French)
• RaiLibro Stas' Gawronski: "Il testamento artistico di Maestro" (Italian)
• dsonline.it Mario Verdone: "Un eccezionale documento biografico" (Italian)
• Indiewire Interviewed by Wendy Mitchell
• Radio National Australia Interviewed by Julie Rigg
• Radio France Entretien avec Caroline Caldier (French)
• The Paris Review Italo Calvino interviewed by Damian Pettigrew
• Film Comment - Review of I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon

Persondata
Name	Pettigrew, Damian
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth	Québec, Canada
Date of death
Place of death