Peter Wollen

Peter Wollen (b. 29 June 1938 London) is a film theorist and writer. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969), helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodology of structuralism and semiotics. Wollen's first film credit was as co-writer of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (Professione: Reporter, Italy, 1975) and... more

Peter Wollen (b. 29 June 1938 London) is a film theorist and writer. He studied English at Christ Church, Oxford. Both political journalist and film theorist, Wollen's Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969), helped to transform the discipline of film studies by incorporating the methodology of structuralism and semiotics. Wollen's first film credit was as co-writer of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (Professione: Reporter, Italy, 1975) and he made his debut as a director with Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), the first of six films co-written and co-directed with his wife, Laura Mulvey. The low-budget Penthesilea portrayed women's language and mythology as silenced by patriarchal structures. Acknowledging the influence of Jean-Luc Godard's Le Gai savoir (France, 1968), Wollen intended the film to fuse avant-garde and radically political elements. The resultant work is innovative in the context of British cinema history, although unsurprisingly its relentlessly didactic... less