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Damian Pettigrew

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).

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.

Pettigrew's films include portraits of Eugène Ionesco, Italo Calvino, and Moebius. His film, 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. Highly-esteemed by Guy Davenport, it screened in a cycle of film classics by Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, and Jean Vigo in September 2007 at the Museum Ludwig (Cologne, Germany).

Currently, he is directing two major documentaries for ARTE France in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada. 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 films: Darkness Visible starring Tim Roth, and Sam & Me, based on the director's experience working with Samuel Beckett.

Selected Filmography

Director

1983: Film Take 2 Project with Samuel Beckett
1993: Fellini ou l'amour de la vie
1996: Balthus Through the Looking Glass / Balthus de l'autre côté du miroir
1999: Moebius et Mike S. Blueberry
2002: Fellini: I'm a Born Liar / Fellini, sono un gran bugiardo / Fellini, je suis un grand menteur
2008: Cabaret Hilda
2009: Calvino Cosmorama

Producer

Ionesco : Conversations autour d'une caméra (Ionesco interviews)
Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (Fellini interviews)
Calvino Cosmorama (Calvino interviews)

Screenplays

Darkness Visible (2003 / 2007)
Les Yeux de ma mâitresse (2005 - funded by the Centre national de la cinématographie)
Sam & Me (2007)

Video art

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

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).