A new anthology of uncollected writings by Peter Wollen, cultural critic, avant-garde filmmaker and curator of paradigm-shifting exhibitions.
This collection, the first of three new volumes, brings together unpublished and inaccessible writings on counter-cinema, anti-imperialist politics and revolutionary Mexican art. Playful, theoretically rigorous and historically precise, Peter Wollen’s writing reinvented criticism as a formally experimental practice indexing the intellectual, political and artistic histories of the twentieth century.
Arrows of Desire presents texts on Eisenstein and Godard alongside essays and interviews tracing developments in film and video from the 1970s to the 1990s. It tracks the political energies running through Wollen’s filmmaking and writing on global politics and culture in relation to Iran, Indonesia, Palestine, Aden and Zanzibar. Wollen’s rereading of the avant-garde extends into expansive projects linking Mexican muralism, Native American abstraction and US abstract expressionism. These essays and proposals demonstrate his commitment to contesting the dominant histories and geographies of modernism and modernity.
What People Are Saying
"This thrilling book does more than confirm Peter Wollen’s place as perhaps the most incisive thinker to triangulate cinema, art and politics in the post-1968 period: by collecting lesser-known texts and astutely contextualising them, it reveals Wollen’s daring interdisciplinary expansiveness. With a critical and passionate gaze, Wollen meets his changing times in essays full of historical consciousness and conviction, launching arrows that sail into the darkness of our present with a shock of illumination. If this first book is anything to go by, the next two volumes of these previously uncollected writings can’t come soon enough." Erika Balsom, author of The Edges of Cinema
"The single most influential film theorist in the English language." Henry K. Miller, Sight and Sound
"A brilliant mind. Peter wrote on film, art, politics, fashion, on culture generally. To say Peter Wollen was preternaturally and uniquely gifted is not adequate." Lynne Tillman, Artforum
"An intransigently original and politically engaged figure." Edward Said, Nation
"Thirty-six striking essays, across a breathtaking range of subjects and in a dizzying register of moods and tones, at once brilliant and revelatory" JOHN AKOMFRAH
"The writings of curator and filmmaker Peter Wollen serve as a historical touchstone and source of theoretical fuel." NICOLE BRENEZ
About the Author
Peter Wollen (1938-2019) was a cultural critic, film theorist, curator and avant-garde filmmaker. His books include Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Raiding the Icebox, Readings and Writings, and Singin’ in the Rain. He co-wrote the screenplay for Antonioni’s The Passenger, and subsequently made six films in collaboration with Laura Mulvey, including Riddles of the Sphinx. His final film was a solo project, Friendship’s Death, starring Tilda Swinton.
