Tonite Let’s All Make Love in Leicester: Peter Whitehead and the Long 1960s’

To celebrate the donation of the Peter Whitehead Archive to De Montfort University and the 50th anniversary of the flowering of the counterculture, the Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre is holding an interdisciplinary conference with film screenings on the 3rd - 4th March 2017 in Leicester (DMU and Phoenix Cinema). The conference opens at 2.00pm on Friday 3 March and closes at 7.00pm on Sat 4 March.

‘Peter Whitehead is a really special film-maker… He really chronicled that period in London in the ‘60s, the supposedly swinging London of that time’, that is the verdict of Martin Scorsese in the catalogue for the The Rolling Stones retrospective at the Saachi Gallery. Whitehead (b. 1937) is one of the most innovative documentarists of the 1960s. A scientist turned film-maker, artist, novelist, falconer and mystic, Whitehead captured the meeting of avant-garde and pop culture that produced the sixties counterculture. He virtually invented the pop promo video and the ‘gonzo’ style of documentary. He filmed The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Hockney, Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Brook’s US (1966), and collaborated with Niki de Saint Phalle and Penny Slinger.

The conference will feature an introduction to, and tour of, the Peter Whitehead Archive; a 50th Anniversary screening of Whitehead’s iconic documentary, Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967), including previously unseen outtakes and video interview with the director; a screening of Richard Kovitch’s important new documentary, Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows. Confirmed speakers include:

- Professor Justin Smith (Portsmouth)

- feminist artist, Penny Slinger, whose rich 1960s/70s work encompassed a striking range of practices and provocative subject matter

- counter-cultural figure, Jenny Spires, influential on the making of Tonite, former partner of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barratt, and now a key instigator in the current Barrett celebratory events.

Full Price: £70

Concessions (students/unwaged): £35

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE: http://store.dmu.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-technology/conferences/tonite-lets-all-make-love-in-leicester-peter-whitehead-and-the-long-1960s

CONFERENCE DETAILS:

Friday 3 March 2017

1.45 Registration

2.15 Panel 1: Myths of the Counterculture (Cl 3.03)

Adrian Smith (University of Sussex) – ‘The Love Business: European Prostitution Drama as British Popular Entertainment’

Richard Farmer (University of East Anglia) – ‘The Touchables (1968) and the Cinematic Counterculture’

Melanie Williams (University of East Anglia) – ‘Hart of Darkness? The Film Career of David Hart and Right-wing Counterculture’

3.35 Coffee

3.55 Panel 2: Real Gone Gals and Boys (Cl 3.03)

Caroline Langhorst (University of Mainz, Germany) – ‘All Gone (Now While I Love You Alone)’? Whitehead, Watkins, Levy and the “Swinging Sixties”’

Sophia Satchell-Baeza (King’s College, London) – ‘The “Ultimate Dream Environment”: Filming the Psychedelic Nightclub’

Mark Goodall (University of Bradford) – ‘Peter Whitehead’s Music of the Spheres’

5.15 Refreshments and Performance: Sophie Swoffer (De Montfort University) ‘Have Your Cake and I’ll Eat it for You’ (Cl 00.01)

5.30 Archive Visit 1, Refreshments and Performance: Sophie Swoffer (De Montfort University) ‘Have Your Cake and I’ll Eat it for You’ (Cl 00.01)

5.50 Archive Visit 2 and Film Installation: Su Ansell (De Montfort University) ‘Out of the Archive: Will’(Cl 00.01)

6.15 Performance: Nick Kilby (Artist and Independent Scholar) ‘The Rising’ (space TBC)

6.40 Dinner available at Phoenix Cinema (not included in conference fee)

8.15 Steve Chibnall: Introduction to Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967)

8.30 Screening of Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (Phoenix Screen 2: Free for delegates)

9.30 Discussion and Q&A with Jenny Spires, Alissa Clarke and Steve Chibnall, and including additional footage shot by Peter Whitehead and a new filmed interview with Whitehead.

11.00 Close

Day 2

Saturday 4 March

9.30 Panel 3: Artistic Collaborations and Feminist Interventions (Cl 3.03)

Gary Needham (Liverpool University) – ‘Warhol’s collaborations as a New Relational Mode’

Alissa Clarke (De Montfort University) – ‘Shooting, Stripping, Whipping, Cuming: The Resistant Potential of Multiplicit Performance in Peter Whitehead and Niki de Saint Phalle’s Daddy (1973)’

Claire Monk (De Montfort University) –‘For Freaks, Prophets and Witches: Jane Arden, Radical Filmmaker and Theatremaker (1927–1982): Feminism, Anti-Psychiatry and 1960s–1970s Counterculture’

10.50 Coffee and Installation by Penny Slinger: Lilford Hall (Cl 3.02)

11.20 Panel 4: Pride of Place (Cl 3.03)

Stephen Glynn (Oakham School and DMU) – ‘“Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner”: Peter Whitehead and the Rolling Stones’

Steve Chibnall (De Montfort University) – ‘Tonite Let’s All Make Love in Leicester: Musical and Amatory Adventures in Provincial England’

12.15 Keynote

Justin Smith (University of Portsmouth) – ‘“When I Was Young”: Peter Whitehead, the Summer of Love and the Birth of the British Pop Promo’

1.10 Lunch and Installation by Penny Slinger: Lilford Hall (Cl 3.02)

2.00 Panel 5: The Hall, The Fall and US (Cl 3.03)

Richard Dacre (Royal Albert Hall and DMU) – ‘Counterculture and Peter Whitehead at The Royal Albert Hall’

John Wyver (University of Westminster) – ‘Doubt, Lies and Vietnam: Two Approaches to Filming US’

Martin Halliwell (University of Leicester) – ‘Reality Under Siege in 1968: Peter Whitehead’s The Fall’

Ramsay Burt (De Montfort University) – ‘Dancing and The Fall’