Peter Whitehead Double Bill @ Phantoscope

Delighted to announce that Phantoscope, Triskel Christchurch Cinema’s quarterly experimental film programme, is presenting an evening entirely dedicated to legendary maverick documentary maker Peter Whitehead. One of the most provocative and distinctive voices in British cinema, Whitehead is best remembered as a unique chronicler of ‘60s Swinging London and, in his monumental The Fall (1969), New York. He was a filmmaker whose work, in the words of Richard Roud, attempted “to come to grips with today, both in terms of its content as well as of its form.” 

On the evening of Thursday January 23rd, Triskel will screen The Fall and Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967). This double bill is Phantoscope’s tribute to Whitehead, who passed away last June. We are delighted that Alissa Clarke, co-curator of the Peter Whitehead Archive at De Montfort University, will join us for a discussion of Whitehead’s work at the event.        

Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film and recently hailed by The Guardian as “his masterpiece”, The Fall is an extremely personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence of late ’60s America that remains a remarkable document of its times. This experimental documentary moves from an intense exploration of the nature of the image in coming to grips with contemporary reality to take its place on the frontlines of the 1968 student occupation of Columbia University and its violent outcome.

Tonite Let's All Make Love in London is an exuberant exploration of the explosion of English pop culture in the days of ‘Swinging London’ features such luminaries as Mick Jagger, Julie Christie, Michael Caine and Pink Floyd. A self-described ‘Pop Concerto for Film’, its main theme is the notion of pop as the cultural expression of the excitement then occurring in the city. Although widely perceived as an iconic celebration of the time, it is not without a critical edge in its look at the construction of myths around the era.