Peter Webber

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Peter Webber (* 1968 ) is a British film director , screenwriter and film editor .

Life

Peter Webber studied art history at a university for three years . After graduating, the avowed cinephile began postgraduate studies at a film school. Webber made his first steps in the film business as an editor, including in 1991 for Cheryl Farthing's short film Rosebud . After completing his film studies, his first directorial work followed in 1992 with The Zebra Man , for which he was able to win over the then unknown actress Minnie Driver . The eleven-minute short film, staged together with Tom Hare Duke, tells the true story of Horace Ridler (1886–1969), who in the early 1940s displayed his zebra-like full-body tattoo in England and France under the stage name The Great Omi . Webber then directed several television documentaries for Channel 4 between 1994 and 1995 , of which A to Z of Wagner , an art documentary about the German composer Richard Wagner , won an award at the Lyon Operascreen Film Festival and was nominated at the Royal Television Society Awards. Also in 1994, Webber met film producers Anand Tucker and Andy Paterson , who won him over as editor for Tucker's project Football Crazy , a television documentary about a south London amateur soccer team. The collaboration was repeated in 1996 when Peter Webber was responsible for the editing of Anand Tucker's biopic Saint-Ex , in which Bruno Ganz slipped into the role of the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry alongside Miranda Richardson .

After the Channel 4 documentaries Creatures Of The Abyss and Fields of Gold, which belonged to the trilogy The Deep about the wondrous world of the ocean, Peter Webber's second TV film The Temptation of Franz Schubert followed in 1997 , which was also entitled The Double Life of Franz Schubert is known. In the fifty-minute drama, which was broadcast on British television at Christmas 1997, Simon Russell Beale acted as the Austrian composer suffering from syphilis . In addition to other television documentaries that Webber directed for Channel 4, the 65-minute romantic drama Underground followed in 1999 and the award-winning two-part television series Men Only in 2001 . The story of an aging five-man London soccer team drifting into crime as hooligans sparked controversy in the UK due to a rape scene . After the TV two-parter The Stretford Wives (2002) for the BBC was planning Peter Webber a film about the German RAF - terrorist Ulrike Meinhof to turn (1934-1976), but was forced by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 the project due to lack of financial Set funds.

By chance, Peter Webber ended up directing his first cinema production in 2002, The Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003). The costume drama, produced by Anand Tucker and Andy Paterson, was originally intended to be directed by the British Mike Newell with Kate Hudson and Ralph Fiennes in the leading roles. Hudson had dropped out in the course of pre-production and the film project had come to a standstill. With Webber as the new director, the leading roles were cast with the then 19-year-old American Scarlett Johansson and the British Colin Firth . The film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier about the possible genesis of Jan Vermeer's painting Girl with Pearl was a success with critics and received three nominations for an Oscar , two for the Golden Globe and ten for the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA Award ). While the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dubbed the work "a feast for the eyes" , the New York Times praised Webber for his "sovereign but stunning debut" , for which he was the most promising newcomer at the BAFTAs and best British film director from the Directors Guild of Great Britain was nominated.

After the success of his first feature film, Peter Webber took on the fourth season of the successful television series Six Feet Under in 2004, directing the episode The Provocation (original title: The Dare ). In 2006, Webber was hired by Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis to direct Hannibal Rising - How It All Began . The drama with the French actor Gaspard Ulliel in the title role, is based on the thriller Behind the Mask of Thomas Harris . The book is a prequel to Harris' novels Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Hannibal (1999), in each of which Oscar- winner Anthony Hopkins played the title role, and traces the path of young Hannibal Lecter von his childhood in Lithuania , his youth in France and his meeting with FBI agent Will Graham in the USA. The film was shot in the Barrandov film studios in Prague in 2006 and opened in US cinemas in early February 2007 . There, the 37 million euro production fell through with the audience due to the lack of Anthony Hopkins and staging weaknesses and was only welcomed by a few critics due to Webber's formal aesthetics.

After the commercial failure of Hannibal Rising , Webber did not return to directing a film project until two years later. In 2009 the short film Jasim , a cinematic biography of Hamad bin Chalifa Al Thani , the Emir of Qatar, was made . The project, filmed in Qatar and starring Qatari actors, was produced on the occasion of the country's national holiday celebrations in December 2009.

Webber then worked on the Japanese feature film project Emperor , which premiered in Toronto in September 2012. The drama takes place shortly after the end of World War II and focuses on an American general (played by Matthew Fox ) who has to decide how to deal legally with the Japanese Emperor Hirohito ( Takatarō Kataoka ).

Filmography (selection)

As a director

  • 1992: The Zebra Man (short film)
  • 1994: Eurotrash (TV documentary)
  • 1994: Badass TV (TV documentary)
  • 1994: Fortean TV (TV documentary)
  • 1995: A to Z of Wagner (TV documentary)
  • 1995: Equinox: God Only Knows (TV documentary)
  • 1997: Apocalypse When? (TV documentary)
  • 1997: The Temptation of Franz Schubert (TV)
  • 1999: Equinox: Curse Of The Phantom Limbs (TV documentary)
  • 1999: Underground (TV)
  • 2000: Equinox: The Secret Lif Of The Crash Test Dummy (TV documentary)
  • 2001: Men Only (TV miniseries)
  • 2002: The Stretford Wives (TV miniseries)
  • 2003: Girl with a Pearl Earring ( Girl with a Pearl Earring )
  • 2004: Six Feet Under (TV series, episode: The Provocation )
  • 2007: Hannibal Rising - How it all began ( Hannibal Rising )
  • 2009: Jasim (short film)
  • 2012: Emperor - Fight for Peace (Emperor)
  • 2015: Ten Billion (Documentary)
  • 2019: Inna de Yard: The Soul of Jamaica

As a film editor

  • 1991: Rosebud
  • 1992: The Zebra Man
  • 1994: Football Crazy
  • 1996: Saint-Ex

As a screenwriter

  • 1992: The Zebra Man

Awards

British Academy Film Award

  • 2004: Nominated for Best British Film and Promising Newcomer for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

British Independent Film Award

  • 2004: Nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award for Best British Debut Director for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Cinemanila International Film Festival

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Film category for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

David di Donatello

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best European Film category for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Dinard British Film Festival

  • 2003: Best film and audience award for The Girl with the Pearl Earring

Directors Guild of Great Britain

  • 2004: Nominated for Best Director for a British Film for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Goya

  • 2005: Nominated in the Best European Film category for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Polish film award

  • 2005: Best European Film for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

San Sebastián International Film Festival

  • 2003: CICAE Award , nominated in the Best Film category for The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Interview with Peter Webber at br-online.de ( Memento from November 2, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ cf. Lovenberg, Felicitas von: Window cleaning for Vermeer: ​​"The girl with the pearl earring". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 22, 2004
  3. ↑ cf. Excerpt from the New York Times review at rottentomatoes.com
  4. ↑ cf. Film review in film-dienst 04/2007
  5. ↑ Qatar: Filmmaker sees bright future in Qatar . In: Right Vision News , September 1, 209 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  6. ^ Inna de Yard review - a poignant tale of resistance, resilience and reggae . In: The Guardian , August 30, 2019. Retrieved August 31, 2019. 
personal data
SURNAME Webber, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film director
DATE OF BIRTH 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH United Kingdom