Peter Weir in 2011 at an independdent film festival in Cracow. Photograph by Piotr Drabik retrieved from Wikimedia Commons (accessed: September 14, 2022).
Peter Weir
, b. 1944
Peter Weir was born in Sydney in 1944. He attended Vaucluse Boys’ High School and The Scots College before studying arts and law at the University of Sydney. His passion for film began during his time at the university, when he met a group of fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films. After that he dropped out of the university and worked as a real estate seller for two years in order to make enough money to afford sailing to England with several friends. During their trip Weir and his companions found an unused closed-circuit television camera and created revues and entertainments for other passengers. When they returned to Sydney in 1966, Weir was determined to become a filmmaker. He started his career as a stagehand at Channel 7 television, after that he directed two short films: Count Vim’s Last Exercise (1968), The Life and The Times of the Reverand Buck Shotte (1968). In the ‘70s Weir became a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement with films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Last Wave (1977) and Gallipoli (1981). Since then Weir has directed various movies including The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Green Card (1998) and The Truman Show (1998). For his work, Weir has received six Academy Award Nominations as either a director, writer or producer.
Sources:
Champlin, Charles, “Peter Weir: In a Class by Himself: Disney gambles that summer audiences will tire of sequels and look for more challenging fare”, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1989 (accessed: September 14, 2022).
Peter Weir Biography at filmreference.com (accessed: September 14, 2022).
Tibbetts, John C., “In Search of Peter Weir”, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 41.4 (2013), 170–180 (accessed: September 14, 2022).
Bio prepared by Zofia Kowalska, University of Warsaw, z.kowalska4@student.uw.edu.pl
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