Stephen Peet

Stephen Peet (born February 16, 1920 in Penge , † December 22, 2005 ) was a British documentary filmmaker .

Career

Stephen Peet came from a Quaker family. His father was a journalist. He grew up with the ideals of the Quaker community, including pacifism . In the late 1930s he began working as a camera assistant with the documentary filmmaker Marian Grierson , sister of John Grierson . During the Second World War he served as a medic, first in London , then in North Africa and Greece , where he was taken prisoner, some of which he spent in Germany . After the war, he worked as a cameraman and director for the Central African Film Unit , where he helped the indigenous people make films for the native African population.

He has worked for television since the early 1960s. Initially for ITV , where he worked for the editorial News was responsible. In 1967 he went to the second program of the BBC , where he worked in the documentary department. There he developed the concept of oral history . He introduced interviewing contemporary witnesses in documentaries. Between 1969 and 1981 he made more than 80 films in this style, popularizing British television documentaries. He interviewed British soldiers from the Boer War , contemporary witnesses of disasters in the first quarter of the 20th century and many more.

After retiring from the BBC in the early 1980s, he lectured around the world on documentary film and oral history .

Much later it emerged that Peet was blacklisted by both the BBC and MI5 because his brother, who sympathized with communism , lived in the GDR . He never belonged to any party and was liberal all his life.

Web links

• Stephen Peet in the Internet Movie Database (English)