Film director, born in Sydney, New South Wales, SE Australia. He studied at Sydney University, joined a local television station in 1967, and began directing short films with Count Vim's Last Exercise (1967). His first feature film was The Cars that Ate Paris (1974), but he came to the forefront of the Australian film industry with the languid ghost story Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1980). He then moved to America, and had international success with Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989, BAFTA Best Film), Green Card (1990), and Fearless (1993). He won BAFTA Best Director awards for The Truman Show (1998) and Master and Commander (2003, Oscar nomination Best Director), and in 2003 received the first John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Excellence in Artistic Achievement.
This article is about the Australian film director. For the Northern Ireland politician, see Peter Weir (politician).Peter Lindsay Weir (born August 21, 1944) is an Australian film director. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films. During this period, using station facilities, he made his first two experimental short films, Count Vim's Last Exercise and The Life and Flight of Reverend Buckshotte.
Weir then took up a position with the Commonwealth Film Unit (later renamed Film Australia), for whom he made several documentaries, including a short documentary about young people living in the underprivileged outer suburbs of Sydney, and the short rock music film Three Directions In Australian Pop (1970), which featured rare in-concert colour footage of three major Australian rock acts of the period, Spectrum, The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band and Wendy Saddington.
After leaving the CFU, Weir made his first major independent film, the short feature Homesdale (1971), a black comedy which co-starred actress Kate Fitzpatrick and musician and comedian Grahame Bond, who later became famous as the star of The Aunty Jack Show;
Weir's first full-length feature film was the underground cult classic, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974). Widely credited as a pivotal work in the so-called Australian film renaissance of the mid-1970s, the film also helped launched the career of internationally renowned Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd. It was widely acclaimed by critics, many of whom praised it as a welcome antidote to the so-called "ocker film" genre, typified by The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple.
His next feature, The Last Wave, which starred American actor Richard Chamberlain, was a pensive, ambivalent film which expanded on the themes of Picnic, exploring the interaction between the native Aboriginal culture and the European. It was only moderately successful at the time, but Weir scored a major hit with his next film Gallipoli (1981), scripted by renowned Australian playwright David Williamson. Gallipoli was instrumental in making Mel Gibson into a major international film star, but Gibson's co-star Mark Lee, who also received high praise for his role, has made only a handful of film appearances since.
Filmmaking in the United States
Weir's first American film was the highly successful thriller Witness (1985), which was set in an Amish community. Both films starred Harrison Ford and provided him with opportunities to avoid being typecast by his previous roles in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, and to play more subtle and substantial roles.
Both of Weir's next two films, Dead Poets Society (1989), starring Robin Williams, and Green Card (1990), starring Gérard Depardieu, were major box-office hits, and they brought Weir significant critical and commercial success;
But Weir bounced back in 1998 with the hugely successful The Truman Show, a wry satire on the nascent reality TV trend. The Truman Show also includes a small reference back to the very beginning of Weir's directorial career -- Australian actor Terry Camilleri, who starred in Weir's first feature, The Cars That Ate Paris, appears in a cameo role.
Themes and celebrity
Although Peter Weir's films are extremely varied in subject and locale, all are linked by Weir's enduring thematic interest, that of exploring the reactions and behaviour of characters who find themselves in isolating or alienating situations.
Often his films will involve a juxtaposition between macrocosm and microcosm, with the characters often making the difficult choice of choosing to live within the macrocosm. In April 2005 Weir returned to Sydney and reunited with the stars of Gallipoli to celebrate the film's release on DVD.
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