‘Peter Whitehead could justifiably claim to be one of Britain’s most distinctive and provocative film-makers. His film about the Rolling Stones, Charlie Is My Darling (1966), was a pioneering portrait of the group amid the whirlwind of fan mania, its on-the-road intimacy a precursor of Donn Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan film Don’t Look Back and a blueprint for countless future music documentaries.
‘In Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967), Whitehead created what for many critics was the definitive document of swinging London in its period as a white-hot crucible of music, fashion and film. The many short music films Whitehead made in the 1960s foreshadowed the era of the video promo clip that blossomed in the MTV era of the 80s.
‘But by the time he made The Fall (1969), arguably his masterpiece, the intellectually restless Whitehead had moved beyond being merely an onlooker recording events with his camera and was pursuing his own inner journey through a period of violent social and political change.
‘His most intensely creative period began in 1965, when he filmed the International Poetry Incarnation – a gathering of beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti – at the Royal Albert Hall in London, to make the 33-minute documentary Wholly Communion.
‘Word of this reached the Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who invited Whitehead to film the Stones’ trip to Belfast and Dublin in September that year. The resulting Charlie Is My Darling had its first public screening at the 1966 Mannheim film festival, where it was considered for the gold medal (which was won instead by Wholly Communion). However, a clash with Oldham about the film’s portrayal of the Stones meant that it never went on general release.
‘Whitehead did further work with the Stones, including the promo film for the single Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow? (1966) and the audacious clip for We Love You (1967). The latter was shot the day before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards appealed against their drug convictions, and starred the two Stones and Marianne Faithfull in a remake of Oscar Wilde’s indecency trial. “My ambitions are very high – none higher – to be a genius in and with the cinema,” Whitehead wrote in a letter to Oldham.
‘Though he was a classical music enthusiast with little interest in pop, Whitehead understood its potency. He shot films with the Small Faces, the Beach Boys, Eric Burdon, Jimi Hendrix, Nico, the Beach Boys and Pink Floyd, and in 1970 he made a memorable concert film of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall.
‘While Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London made Whitehead the toast of the 60s in-crowd, the film also included critical remarks about the vapidity of the London milieu from Jagger, Michael Caine and David Hockney. Whitehead himself, a vehement opponent of US imperialism and the Vietnam war, had a theory that the invention of “swinging London” was “a CIA manoeuvre designed to make British counterculture appear inconsequential and impotent”, as he wrote in 2002.
‘Thus he was enthusiastic about Peter Brook’s invitation to film his experimental Royal Shakespeare Company play US, designed to challenge British apathy about the escalating Vietnam conflict. When the resulting film, Benefit of the Doubt, was screened alongside Tonite … at the New York film festival in September 1967, Whitehead was invited to make a film about the New York “scene”.
‘He was eager to oblige, but the project, eventually released as The Fall (1969), ballooned into a panorama of politics, violent protest and an anguished examination of the role of the documentary film-maker, as Whitehead became a participant in the 1968 student occupation of New York’s Columbia University. His filming schedule was bookended by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. He wrote that when he got back to London, “I had a nervous breakdown. Didn’t speak for three months.”
‘The traumas of making The Fall prompted Whitehead to move away from film-making. Though he made Daddy (1973), a sexual psychodrama about the sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, and Fire in the Water (1977), a vehicle for his then partner Nathalie Delon, his attention now centred on breeding falcons. A student of ancient Egyptian mythology, he was obsessed with the story of Isis and Osiris giving birth to Horus the falcon.’ — The Guardian
_____
Stills
____
Further
Peter Whitehead Official Site
Peter Whitehead @ IMDb
Whitehead, Peter (1937- 2019)
Notes from Underground
‘The Films of Peter Whitehead’, by Robert Chilcott
Peter Whitehead – Réalisateur de ‘Pop Concerto’
Peter Whitehead et Niki de Saint Phalle : Daddy
DVD: Peter Whitehead and the Sixties
Peter Whitehead @ datacide
The Word and the Image: The Films of Peter Whitehead
Peter Whitehead, il filmmaker della lotta e del rock
Peter Whitehead @ The Sticking Place
From pop concerto to falconry – a beginner’s guide to Peter Whitehead’s world
PETER WHITEHEAD: REVOLUTION, REVELATION – PINK FLOYD LONDON 1966-1967
Peter Whitehead Was There
‘I’ve never been interested in the real world’
____
Extras
In the Beginning was the Image: Conversations with Peter Whitehead
The Move in a rare early interview by Peter Whitehead
Peter Whitehead Piece
_____
Interview
from Electric Sheep
CLF: What can you tell us about the film you’re now working on, Terrorism Considered as one of the Fine Arts?
PW: My new film can be considered The Fall‘s sequel since it enacts the end of representation. The protagonist is Michael Schlieman, a MI6 spy working in the terrorism section of the British intelligence. He disappeared and will publish his ‘confessions’ on the internet, revealing the truth about secret operations carried out by various governments. There is a parallel between the sinking of the French Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior, and the terrorist state murder of a Greenpeace photographer. Schlieman is now part of an eco-terrorist group… the central element of the film is the killing of an ideal victim. I want to investigate the CIA’s influence on English culture, which is based on misinformation. This new film is influenced by Thomas De Quincey’s novels, Confessions of an Opium Eater and Murder Considered as a Fine Art, and I’d say that it is about fear and control, or better still, about the fear that the state spreads in order to control. After having destroyed the Third World now we are also destroying this planet; Gaia is now, rightly so, revolting.
CLF: Can cinema participate in social struggles, or does it merely register/ document?
PW: Yes, partly it can but it’s just a little part. I think that avant-garde art always has to be directly and belligerently dangerous, destructive, but not towards itself, rather, towards the collective inertia. The true aim of art should be to cultivate acts of war… it’s not enough to paint words on walls, these walls need to be torn down.
CLF: Can you tell us more about the magazine you co-founded, Afterimage?
PW: I founded that magazine with Field and Sainsbury in 1970, we were mainly influenced by Cahiers and its political commitment and wanted to bring across the channel some avant-garde cinema such as Godard’s British Sounds (Peter Whitehead was the first one to translate Godard’s films into English) which remains little seen to these days. We were the first to publish the Manifesto of Third Cinema by Solanas and Getino in Europe besides reviewing Guney, Fassbinder and Herzog among others.
CLF: While watching the early Rolling Stones performances in Charlie is My Darling I felt that back then they were using a language that many found dangerous and hyper-kinetic. What attracted you most to that band?
PW: You got the point, the media back then was focusing on the style of the band while for me it was a matter of form or language, as you said. They were adopting the musical culture of the Afro-Americans, an oppressed minority, therefore that music was carrying a strong political message in itself. Jagger himself said, ‘music is one of the things that can change society, don’t let white kids listen to black music if you want them to remain how they are’.
CLF: I’ve just watched your first film The Perception of Life, and in spite of being poles apart from the rest of your production I thought that it somehow represented your cinema quite well. What do you think of that film?
PW: I have to admit that back then I didn’t like the film but, later on I got interested by the fact that it was all shot through a microscope, in other words I was not using the camera, I was using a microscope, and many sequences are shot through the oldest machines used by scientists. We were looking for what these scientists were seeing through those lenses. Perception shows how theories are determined by what is visible. You’re right, in a sense all my films are linked to the idea of using the camera as a microscope. I think that in all my films I enter a situation and I try to analyse it from the inside.
______________
14 of Peter Whitehead’s 21 films
______________
Wholly Communion (1966)
‘Now celebrated as the quintessential document of the event that marked the arrival of the counterculture in England, Wholly Communion was actually captured under highly restricted conditions – and was almost never completed. The First International Poetry Incarnation, an evening of American and British Beat poetry, took place on 11th June 1965; the film’s birth was as spontaneous as the event itself. Peter Whitehead had attended an intimate reading by Allen Ginsberg, at which was suggested the apparently foolhardy idea of booking the Albert Hall for Ginsberg and his contemporaries to gather and perform their poems. Yet after a few days’ organisation, 7,000 people of various hitherto unconnected subcultures arrived, with many turned away as tickets sold out.
‘Wholly Communion is perhaps the most distinctive British example of a documentary movement that attempted to capture reality while interrogating it: ‘direct cinema’. Whitehead’s camera draws attention to itself and the filmmaker’s presence by filming Gregory Corso’s reading from between two other poets talking during the performance. This technique emphasises the filmmaker’s subjectivity while also identifying the camera (and therefore the viewer) with the perspective of the audience present at the event.
‘Whitehead shows as much interest in the audience as he does in the poets. Exotic spectators such as the girl who dances with a flower to the cadence of Ginsberg’s oratory appear just as significant as the central performances. The sense of disintegration between audience and performance is most palpable when Whitehead’s camera searches the auditorium to train in on a poet in the audience who, in a state of intoxication, interrupts Harry Fainlight’s reading by crying out the words “Love! Love!”‘ — bfi
the entire film
_____________
The Rolling Stones: Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow? (1966)
‘Peter Whitehead’s promotional film for the single was one of the first music videos.’ — Wikipedia
_____________
Charlie is my Darling (1966)
‘Whitehead catches the band while its feet are still touching the ground and while its members are still facing both the homey pleasures and the mounting terrors of a relatively un-insulated life, while their joy in making music and in having a limber jaunt together is still fresh and their success is still a lightly gilded serendipity. Whitehead, filming in black and white with agile, handheld cameras, gets some crucial things right. He wants to hear the Stones speak, and he keeps them aware of the camera, eliciting the unique mixture of the unguarded and the self-dramatizing that is the hallmark of cinema verité. The film captures some fine moments of performance, some revealing moments of offhanded intimacy, and others of purposeful reflection—and, over-all, it presents an astonishingly clear sense of the grandeur and decadence of Stones-ism.’ — The New Yorker
Trailer
Excerpt
Excerpt
_____________
Jeanetta Cochrane (1967)
‘More consciously experimental than Whitehead’s other works, this film draws on a variety of sources, including sequences of London shot while Whitehead was at the Slade School of Art, glimpses of the singer and model Nico, and footage of the psychedelic underground nightclub UFO. There is also on-screen text, a voice critiquing it, and music from Pink Floyd, at this point still fronted by Syd Barrett–Whitehead’s old painting friend from Cambridge. The track here, “Interstellar Overdrive”, was recorded by Whitehead before the band signed to EMI and is much more exciting and beat-driven than the version they would later record for the label. There is no explicit link between the content of the film and the Cochrane Theatre, which is is named after, but the theatre was used as a venue for the Spontaneous Festival of Underground Films in 1966.’ — letterboxd
______________
The Rolling Stones: We Love You (1967)
‘The promotional film for the single was directed by Peter Whitehead. It included footage from recording sessions along with segments that re-enacted the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, with Jagger, Richards and Marianne Faithfull respectively portraying Wilde, Marquess of Queensberry, and Lord Alfred Douglas. Footage also appears of Brian Jones, apparently high on drugs with his eyes drooping and unfocused. The producer of Top of the Pops refused to show the film on that programme. A BBC spokesman stated the producer did not think it was suitable for the type of audience who watches Top of the Pops. He went on to say there was not a ban on it by the BBC, it was simply this producer’s decision.’ — Wikipedia
_____________
Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967)
‘Peter Whitehead’s disjointed Swinging London documentary, subtitled “A Pop Concerto,” comprises a number of different “movements,” each depicting a different theme underscored by music: A early version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” accompanies a young woman’s description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic “Changing of the Guard” to shots of Buckingham Palace’s changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) – and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O’Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones’ 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.’ — collaged
Excerpt
Excerpt (Eric Burdon & The Animals ‘When I was young’)
Excerpt
the entire film
_______________
w/ Denis Cannan The Benefit of the Doubt (1967)
‘Based on a play by Peter Brook, entitled U.S., is a critical look at the devastation and inhumanity of war. Whitehead adds to the original footage gathered from television news about the Vietnam conflict, a conflict that bled in all its fullness and divided the world into peace and imperialists.’ — film affinity
the entire film
_______________
Pink Floyd London ’66-’67 (1967)
‘Shot by movie maestro Peter Whitehead, this film features rare full length performances from the classic late 60’s Pink Floyd line-up at Sound Techniques London & material from the legendary ‘14 hour Technicolor Dream’ extravaganza in April ’67 at Alexandra Palace.’ — letterboxd
the entire film
_____________
The Rolling Stones: 2000 Light Years From Home (1967)
‘The clip, filmed and produced in 1967, has now been restored in 4K resolution and released digitally for the first time. The “promotional film,” as it was known back then, was directed by the late Peter Whitehead and shot on 35 MM film. The performance clip opens with closeups of the band members bathed in various colors, with Mick Jagger’s face painted, something he would do again for the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” video, which was filmed the following year. The track, written by Mick and Keith Richards, was the B-side to the single “She’s A Rainbow.” It is believed Mick wrote the lyrics in prison during an incarceration from a drug bust.’ — kslx
_____________
Pink Floyd: Recording Interstellar Overdrive and Nick’s Boogie (1967)
‘The recording of “Interstellar Overdrive'” and “Nick’s Boogie'” was originally filmed for Whitehead’s film Tonite Lets All Make Love in London but weren’t used in the film’ — PF
_____________
The Small Faces & P.P. Arnold: (If You Think You’re) Groovy (1967)
‘The Small Faces, along with Immediate” artist P.P. Arnold and film director Peter Whitehead traveled to Camber Sands to film an Immediate Records promotion film. The 16mm colour film was later used for the promos of The Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park” and they gave “Groovy” to P.P. Arnold. The Small Faces play on this track, basically making it a Small Faces’ record with P.P. Arnold guesting on vocals.’ — bbc
_____________
The Fall (1969)
‘Between October 1967 and June 1968 he filmed in and around New York. Whitehead concentrated on some of the central figures of the civil-rights movement and counter-culture like Stokely Carmichael, Robert Lowell, Paul Auster, Arthur Miller and Robert Rauschenberg. He even managed to get behind the barricades of the radical students from Columbia University while police units insist on trying to break up the occupation of the campus. John Patterson (Vienna Festival Catalogue): ‘Whitehead was his own one-man film unit and was fond of asynchronous images and sounds, allowing new meanings and feelings to arise from the creative use of incongruity. The exemplar of his approach was the dizzyingly impressionistic essay-movie The Fall. Like many a 60s Englishman in America – Hockney, Boorman, Schlesinger, Peter Watkins – he came to the U.S. equipped with freshly-peeled eyeballs and saw a turbulent, vibrant, violent nation in ways Americans themselves often did not. The Fall is unlike any other record of the period – a time a lot like now, full of anti-war and civil-rights demonstrations and profound national self-examination – perhaps because its very obscurity has kept it fresh.’ — EH/iffr
______________
w/ Niki De Saint Phalle Daddy (1973)
‘Daddy, filmed in cooperation with movie director Peter Whitehead, discovers the connection between a father and little girl. Like the majority of Niki De Saint Phalle’s films, the flick combines autobiography with imagination, mixing erotic scenes of incest with a reverse of energy as the female character humors the daddy figure. Saint Phalle narrates the film, offering an almost psycho-analytical explanation of its content and explains the different inexplicable.’ — Letterboxd
______________
Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts (2009)
‘My film is largely based on the recent novel of the same title. It is the first novel of a trilogy entitled “The Nohzone Trilogy”. The second novel is entitled “Nature’s Child” and the third “Girl on the Train”. The central element of the film is the killing of an “ideal victim”. I want to investigate the CIA’s influence on English culture, which is based on misinformation. This new film is influenced by Thomas De Quincey’s novels, “Confessions of an Opium Eater” and “Murder Considered as a Fine Art”, and I would say that it is about fear and control, or better still, about the fear that the state spreads in order to control. After having destroyed the Third World now we are also destroying this planet. Gaia is now, rightly so, revolting.’ — Peter Whitehead
*
p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Awesome, I hope your friend enjoyed it, obviously. Thanks again for pointing her there in any case. Interesting about that doc. I don’t have Netflix, but I’ll see if I can find it somewhere else. I’ve seen video of that Jeremy Deller piece, of course. ** Charalampos, The film Gregg asked me to be in was ‘The Living End’. I haven’t seen ‘Kaboom’. Hey back from you know where. ** Bill, Odd and intriguing it most certainly is. Kind of shocking that so many hadn’t seen ‘MOPI’. Or maybe shocking that I would have expected them too? You’ve seen the film made up of outtakes of ‘MOPI’? There’s some wonderful stuff in there, if you haven’t. It was put together by James Franco, but don’t let that stop you. ** Carsten, I think maybe things are such that an energetic film that doesn’t depend on CGI and color grading and has an inkling of a decent ideology seems pretty tasty. I liked ‘Sinners’. I thought it was solid and well done. We remain non-stormy as usual. ** Laura, I’m still poring, and it is fun among loftier things. Gosh, thank you about ‘Period’. It was a very complicated and difficult novel to write on many levels. Maybe not as much on a technical level as ‘The Marbled Swarm’, but second at least. And, obviously, there was a lot of emotion to wade through and try to regulate with ‘Period’. You can get ‘The Golden Fruits’ for free from Anna’s Archive. The Vista was closed for years but reopened a few years ago, now owned and somewhat directed by Tarantino. The only problem with LA is the parking situation can be so difficult. Well, and the traffic. But I’m a calm driver. I’m beset with horror and a terrible helplessness re: Minneapolis and ICE and a million other US endangering crap situations over here in Paris too, yes. I have an allergy to fabrics and dyes, and have to wear organic clothes which very much prevents me from being into clothes as a thing The night was pretty grayed-out from what I could see of it. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! I obviously so agree. You good? You really, really good? xo. ** kenley, Yay on the editing. It went well, I trust? Fuck knows where that Ira Cohen thing is. I guess he must have an estate or archive or something? My all-time favorite gallery was called Feature in NYC. It’s defunct now, but there’s a book about it. In Paris, I go to a lot of galleries, and they’re all pretty hit and miss. I do really like a small gallery called Art/Concept. Among the bigger ones, Marian Goodman Gallery usually has good shows. Do you have galleries where you are, or any you like? ** Måns BT, Måns! Yes, we’re set! How about that? Yay, we’ll get to meet and hang and have fun. Oh, interesting, about Ellis. I think I remember his thing about the blog murder. On the Q&A, trust your instincts. It’d be totally good and more for us if it’s just us three talking, for sure. You made a short film! Excellent! I’ll go find kollektivtarbt on Instagram and follow you. Wait, I just did. I hope you had a good sleep, whatever that would entail. ** Steeqhen, I wasn’t into Jedward’s music, surely needless to say, but I was interested by their brand’s construction. I’ve heard of ‘Bulk’, but that’s all. Hm, maybe I’ll investigate further. Strange but totally understandable. It’s very hard being an empath in this world today. ** Steve, I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure he’s into Houellbecq. Luck with the jury duty escaping. Just remember if all else fails, ‘anarchist’. ** HaRpEr //, With the Alt Right guy writers I’m familiar with, it really seems like repressed transphobia in particular exploding outwards. Having had the ‘outlaw writer’ tag on myself forever, it’s a yawn, but it could be worse. Haha, nice ending, very ‘DiV’ indeed. ** Uday, I think Gregg’s interest in putting me in a movie is long since dead. Not a problem for me. Wow, cool that you’ve already started the Sarraute. You would get the blog’s Gold Star of the Day if I gave them out. Sounds like first week jitters, but pray tell after you guys settle in. ** Right. Today the blog concentrates on the work of the groovy Brit filmmaker and music video pioneer Peter Whitehead if you’re interested in seeing what he’s about. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Leave a Reply