Peter Gidal

Peter Gidal is a renowned writer, theorist and film-maker. He was born in 1946, and studied theatre, psychology and literature at Brandeis University, Massachussets (1964-68) and the University of Munich (1966-67). He was a student of the Royal College of Art from 1968-71 and went on to teach Advanced Film Theory there until 1984. An active member of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative since 1969, he was its cinema programmer from 1971-74. He was a co-founder of the Independent Film-Makers’ Association in 1975, and served on the British Film Institute Production Board from 1978-81.

Peter Gidal’s films have been screened widely, and were featured in retrospectives at the London ICA (1983), Paris Centre George Pompidou (1996 & 2016), DocPoint Helsinki (2014), Anthology Film Archives (2016) and Cinematek Brussels (2016). He was the recipient of the Prix de la Recherche Toulon (1974), the Ljubljana International Biennial Lifetime Achievement Award (2015) and his most recent film not far at all (2013) won the 2015 L’Âge d’Or Prize at Cinematek Brussels.

Books by Peter Gidal include Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings (Studio Vista, 1971), Structural Film Anthology (BFI, 1976), Understanding Beckett: Monologue and Gesture (Macmillan, 1986), Materialist Film (Routledge, 1988), Andy Warhol: Blow Job (Afterall, 2008) and Flare Ou: Aesthetics 1966-2016 (The Visible Press, 2016). Gidal’s writings have been published extensively in journals such as Studio International, Screen, October and Undercut, and the exhibition catalogues of Gerhard Richter, Cerith Wyn Evans and Thérèse Oulton.