Peter Adam (3 August 1929 – 28 September 2019) was a British filmmaker and author. Born in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, Germany, his work included ''Eileen Gray: Her Life and Work: The Biography'' (2009), ''Outlines: David Hockney'' (1997), and '' Art of the Third Reich'' ().

Early life

Adam was born in 1929 in Berlin, Germany, the son of Luise (Gurke) and Walter Adam. His family was middle-class. His father was Jewish and his mother Protestant. In 1944, he moved to Austria. He became a British citizen in 1965 before taking up a career in

broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

Career

Adam was an

executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights ...

with the BBC for 22 years. He was the editor of the arts magazines ''Review'' and ''Arena''. He was made an Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. An autobiography, ''Mémoires à contre-vent'', was published in French by Edition La Différence in April 2010,(in French
Mémoires à contre-vent – livres de Peter Adam – Critique – Telerama.fr
/ref> previously issued in English as ''Not Drowning But Waving. An Autobiography'' (Andre Deutsch, London 1995). His memoirs detailed his friendships with many prominent filmmakers and writers. Adam was a close friend of the painters Prunella Clough and Keith Vaughan, and contributed much to work on both artists. He was the author of the biography of the architect and designer

Eileen Gray Eileen Gray (born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith; 9 August 187831 October 1976) was an Irish architect and furniture designer who became a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. Over her career, she was associated with many notable Euro ...

, published in England, USA, Germany, France, Japan and Russia. He also wrote a book on

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

titled ''David Hockney and his Friends''. His other books included ''Kertesz by Kertesz'' and ''Eisenstaedt by Eisenstaedt''. Adam lived between London and France where he had a house at La Garde Freinet. His London house had been bought from painter Prunella Cough. In his final years he left Britain to live between Paris and the south of France, where he married his life partner, the actor Facundo Bo.

Film works

He made over 100 documentaries for BBC Current Affairs and for the Music and Arts Department, among them many prize-winning films: *''Lawrence Durrell's Spirit of Place'': nominated for a

British Academy Award The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...

for Best Factual Programme of 1976 *''Richard Strauss Remembered'': Golden Award Houston Film Festival for Best Full Length Documentary of 1985 *''Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill'': Prix Italia selection *''George Gershwin Remembered'': British Academy Nomination for Best Arts Program, 1987; Prime Time

Emmy The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

Nomination for Outstanding Special, 1988 *''Art of the Third Reich'': Winner of the 1989 British Academy Award in 1989 for Best Arts Documentary of the Year :Nominated for the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

Award :Nominated for an

Ace Award The CableACE Award (earlier known as the ACE Awards; ACE was an acronym for "Award for Cable Excellence") is a defunct award that was given by what was then the National Cable Television Association from 1978 to 1997 to honor excellence in Ame ...

in Los Angeles He made films on Hockney,

Luchino Visconti Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, stage director, and screenwriter. A major figure of Italian art and culture in the mid-20th century, Visconti was one of the ...

Edward Albee Edward Franklin Albee III ( ; March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) was an American playwright known for works such as '' The Zoo Story'' (1958), '' The Sandbox'' (1959), '' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), '' A Delicate Balance'' (196 ...

, Lillian Hellman,

Hans Werner Henze Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as ...

Serge Diaghilev Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, p ...

and the

Ballets Russes The Ballets Russes () was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. ...

, the German Cinema, and a ten-part series on

Modern Architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that for ...

. He staged

Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

's '' The Soldier's Tale'' and

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...

's '' The Little Mahagonny'' and ''Happy End''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adam, Peter 1929 births 2019 deaths University of Paris alumni Officiers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres British people of German-Jewish descent German emigrants to Austria Austrian emigrants to the United Kingdom British expatriates in France