Peter Whitehead

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.

In this heady, phantasmagoric fairy tale, a young girl comes face to face with a friendly dragon and a magnanimous witch. Upon the witch granting the girl’s wish to become a young woman, this surrealist chronicle follows the precocious Camélia on a series of quests in pursuit of love.

A documentary following US, Peter Brook's experimental play about the moral issues surrounding the Vietnam War, Benefit of the Doubt is the only known film record of the Royal Shakespeare Company production. It was filmed by Peter Whitehead concurrently with his Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967), on the surface a very different film, yet both share a central concern with the war, protest and Britain's political and cultural relationship with America.

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.

Charlie Is My Darling, directed by Peter Whitehead, was the first documentary film about The Rolling Stones. The movie was shot during the band's two-day tour of Ireland on 3 and 4 September 1965, and was completed in the spring of 1966. It received only spotty release in 1966 before being withdrawn, and has seldom been seen since then.

The band wanted to capture the show for posterity, but Whitehead was under the impression he would make a documentary. He and cameraman Ernie Vincze captured the majority of the footage shot that night. In the spring of 1970, he would go on to edit a 42 minute rough cut of the footage using temp audio recorded by the film crew, as Led Zeppelin, unhappy with their performance, refused them access to the multi-track recordings. Whitehead then planned to film Led Zeppelin at the Bath Festival. Unfortunately due to heavy traffic entering the showgrounds, he and Vincze weren't able to film the band's arrival via helicopter, but proceeded to capture moments in the audience, backstage, and at the show itself. Whitehead would produce a B&W workprint of this footage in summer 1970 and also hoped to film the members at home, but upon receiving no input from the band, the project was shelved.

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.

In 1969, Penny Slinger and her then partner filmmaker Peter Whitehead were given permission to produce a body of work in Lilford Hall, a decaying mansion in Northamptonshire, England. Shot over the course of several weeks while living in the estate with actress Suzanka Fraey (The Other Side of the Underneath), Lilford Hall documents the fractured intimacy between the three artists.