Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen

Biographical details:

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen are filmmakers and theorists who collaborated on a number of films between 1974 and 1983. Both educated at Oxford University, their books and essays on cinema developed from the concerns of radical politics and thought in the aftermath of the political upheavals of 1968. Their writings have pioneered the use of semiotic and psycho-analytic frameworks to explore questions of representation in cinema and wider culture, particularly the political and aesthetic issues posed by feminism. Wollen's publications include Signs and Meanings in the Cinema (1969) and Laura Mulvey is renowned for her seminal essay 'Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema', republished in Visual and Other Pleasures (1989).

Their film collaborations were developed in the context of the Independent Film-makers' Association, and attempted to bridge the formalist concerns of British avant-garde filmmakers and the radical political works of film collectives such as Cinema Action in order to 'free up cinema for the poetics of theory.' Their trilogy Penthesilea (1974), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) and Amy! (1980) explored myth and the representation of women, whereas later works ranged from the documentary Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1980) to experimental narratives such as Crystal Gazing (1981) and The Bad Sister (1983).

Laura Mulvey lives in London, she is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Peter Wollen is Professor Emeritus, School of Theatre, Film and Television, University of California, Los Angeles.