Patrick Keiller
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"When a man named Robinson was released from Edgecote open prison, he made his way to the nearest city and looked for somewhere to haunt." --opening lines to Robinson in Ruins (2010) by Patrick Keiller In January 1978, the exhibition Dada and Surrealism Reviewed opened at the Hayward Gallery. In its catalogue, and more particularly in an article by Roger Cardinal, ‘Soluble City: The Surrealist Perception of Paris’, in Surrealism and Architecture, a special issue of Architectural Design that accompanied the exhibition, I read about the Surrealists’ adoption of various sites and structures in Paris in the 1920s. It seemed to me that my identification of sites in London in the 1970s could be seen as something similar."--The View from the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes (2013) by Patrick Keiller |
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Patrick Keiller (born 1950) is a British film director, writer and lecturer.
Biography
Keiller was born in 1950, in Blackpool and studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. In 1979 he joined the Royal College of Art's Department of Environmental Media as a postgraduate student. For a time he taught architecture at the University of East London and fine art at Middlesex University.
His first film was Stonebridge Park (1981) followed by Norwood (1983), The End (1986), Valtos (1987) and The Clouds (1989). These films are typified by their use of subjective camera and voice-over, a technique that was further refined in his longer films London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997).
Both London and Robinson in Space are narrated by an unnamed character (voiced by Paul Scofield) who accompanies his friend and onetime lover, the unseen Robinson, in a series of excursions around London. Robinson is involved with research into the problems of London and, in the later film, England. The films are seen as a critique of the United Kingdom's economic landscape under the Conservative governments of 1979-97.
In 2000, Keiller completed The Dilapidated Dwelling. This film was made for television, but was never broadcast. It features the voice of Tilda Swinton, and its subject matter is the state of the UK's housing.
Keiller's film Robinson in Ruins was released in November 2010. It was one of the outcomes of a three-year research project entitled The Future of Landscape and the Moving Image and reprised the Robinson character from London and Robinson in Space. The actress Vanessa Redgrave assumed the role of narrator.
Bibliography
- Robinson in Space (1999) by Patrick Keiller (includes a conversation with Patrick Wright); published by Reaktion Books.
- The view from the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes (2013); published by Verso.
- Christie, Ian, The man on the Ealing tram: Retro futures and Patrick Keiller's The City of the Future at the BFI Gallery, in Fabrizi, Elisabetta (ed), The BFI Gallery Book, BFI, London 2011, pp.46-51.
Pages linking in as of April 2021
1992 Staples Corner bombing, 1997 Toronto International Film Festival, 67th Venice International Film Festival, Beckton Gas Works, BFI Gallery, BFI National Archive, BFI Production Board, Brent Cross Shopping Centre, British Film Institute, BT Tower, Chris Petit, Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer, Iain Cuthbertson, International Film Festival Rotterdam, John Major, Keillor, London (disambiguation), National Science and Media Museum, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, Pete Silver & Will McLean, Psychogeography, Rhubaba gallery and studios, Robinson in Ruins, The Raincoats, Time Out 100 best British films, Together TV, Upper Norwood, Vanessa Redgrave
