Peter Cowie | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1939-12-24)24 December 1939 (age 85) England |
| Alma mater | Magdalene College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Film historian |
Peter Cowie (born 24 December 1939) is a British film historian and author of more than thirty books on film. In 1963 he was the founder/publisher and general editor of the annualInternational Film Guide, a survey of worldwide film production, which he continued to edit for forty years.
Educated atCharterhouse School, and an exhibitioner in history atMagdalene College, Cambridge,[1] he began writing about film in 1960. He has contributed to many of the world's leading newspapers and periodicals, includingThe New York Times,The Wall Street Journal,The Sunday Times (London), theLos Angeles Times,Le Monde,Expressen,Neue Zürcher Zeitung,Sight and Sound,Variety andFilm Comment.
His books include definitive surveys of the Scandinavian cinema, in particular the work of Swedish film directorIngmar Bergman.[2] In fact, Cowie himself has said that he belongs to a generation whose life was changed by seeingThe Seventh Seal.[3]
In 1963 he published the first edition ofInternational Film Guide which he continued to publish annually for 40 years. During the period 1963–1988, he published almost 100 books on film by various authors at The Tantivy Press in London, including classics likeRobin Wood'sHitchcock's Films. He also launched annual publications on sport (International Cycling Guide,International Running Guide), classical music (International Music Guide), television (International TV and Video Guide) and the Nordic area (The Scandinavian Guide).
Other aspects of his work in the area of Scandinavian cinema include his service on the "Quality Awards" Jury of theSwedish Film Institute for 11 years from the 1970s where he was its only non-Nordic member. In 1989 he was decorated byKingCarl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with theRoyal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Swedish culture. During the 1980s he spent several years in Finland, and since 1983 was the director of the Nordic Film Festival inHanasaari, Helsinki. Cowie has been on various juries, at the Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Tampere festivals.
In 1989 he joinedVariety and served as the international publishing director until 2000.[4] After he joined,International Film Guide was published asVariety International Film Guide until 2006.[5] In 1999, he editedThe Variety Insider with detailed information on the year in entertainment as well as historical information.[6]
He is also interested in the work of American film directors as different asFrancis Ford Coppola,Orson Welles, andJohn Ford.The Godfather Book (Faber, London, 1997) examined Coppola's trilogy of films, and after a visit toMonument Valley inUtah, he wrote an analysis of Ford's films which were shot there,John Ford and the American West (Abrams, New York, 2004), examining the importance of the location and the influences of 19th Century American painting.[7]
He has provided more than a dozenvoice-over audio commentaries for DVD versions of classic films which form part ofThe Criterion Collection. Many of these commentaries are for the films of Bergman. In 2018 he served as Consultant on Criterion's 39-film box-set entitled Ingmar Bergman's Cinema.
He is a sometime visiting professor in film studies at theUniversity of California,Santa Barbara. Between 2003 and 2020 he was a special consultant to theBerlin International Film Festival, working with Berlinale Talents. He has moderated panels and symposia at the Venice International Film Festival,[8] and also on behalf of the European Film Academy. In 2016, he moderated on-stage conversations with Sir Alan Parker, Jaco van Dermal, and Michael Roskam for the MEDIA Program's 25th anniversary celebrations in Brussels.
From 2004 to 2006, he was a member of the executive board at The European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark. In November 2006, to coincide with the centenary of the actressLouise Brooks, Cowie'sLouise Brooks: Lulu Forever was published in Germany and the United States.[9] In 2008, Cowie co-editedProjections: The European Film Academy (Faber, London), and was a contributing editor to the Taschen volume,The Ingmar Bergman Archives. His most recent work includesJoan Crawford, the Enduring Star (Rizzoli, New York 2009), andAkira Kurosawa, Master of Cinema (Rizzoli, New York, 2010).[8] Also in 2010, he wrote a concise history of theBerlin International Film Festival (published by Bertz und Fischer, Berlin).
In 2017, Cowie was a producer of the Criterion Collection's largest-ever boxed set of DVDs/Blu-rays -- "100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012", and contributed a book-length study of the more than fifty documentaries on the Olympics.
Cowie has provided audio commentaries for the following films inThe Criterion Collection:
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