Mark Kidel
Mark Kidel is recognised as one of the world’s leading documentary film makers on the arts and music, and has been directing since the early 1970's. He works mainly in the UK and France, but his work has been selected in many international festivals as well as honoured worldwide. Recent films include "A Journey with Peter Sellars", "Hungary 1956: Our Revolution" (Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary 2007), a portrait of the Italian-American tenor Mario Lanza , the first-ever profile of video artist Bill Viola, films with jazzman Joe Zawinul and the Anglo-Indian singer Susheela Raman, a documentary about Paris’s brothels and a multi award-winning portrait of Ravi Shankar.
He has also made films about the painter Balthus, the pianists Alfred Brendel and Leon Fleisher, the American choreographer Karole Armitage, the British architect Norman Foster, rock musician and composer Robert Wyatt, the 20th century composers Varèse and Xenakis, as well as a number of films on African music, film essays on melancholia and the symbolism of the art and a portrait of the black musician Tricky. He also writes about music , was the first rock critic of the New Statesman, and contributes regularly to the Times Literary Supplement He is a co-founder with Peter Gabriel of WOMAD, the world music festival.