Chris Petit

Directing

Chris Petit

Born

1949-01-01 (77)

Place of birth

London, England, UK

Known for

Directing

Credits

38 titles

Christopher Petit was born in 1949 in London, England. He is a director and writer, known for Radio On (1979), An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982) and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery (1989).

Known for

Film credits

Series credits

Behind the camera

Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery poster
6.7

While on vacation at a resort hotel in the West Indies, Miss Marple correctly suspects that the apparently natural death of a retired British major is actually the work of a murderer planning yet another killing.

Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery

1989

D Is for Distance poster
NR

A film essay montage of contemporary footage, archive and cinema history, about the age of post-truth and how one young man’s childhood epilepsy became representative of the woes of the world and how he triumphed against adversity.

D Is for Distance

2026

D Is for Distance poster
NR

A film essay montage of contemporary footage, archive and cinema history, about the age of post-truth and how one young man’s childhood epilepsy became representative of the woes of the world and how he triumphed against adversity.

D Is for Distance

2026

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman poster
5.4

After finding her boss, a private detective, has committed suicide and has left her his agency, Cordelia Gray is asked to investigate the suicide of the man's son. During the course of her investigation, Cordelia becomes obsessed with the young man's memory and his increasingly suspicious death.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

1982

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman poster
5.4

After finding her boss, a private detective, has committed suicide and has left her his agency, Cordelia Gray is asked to investigate the suicide of the man's son. During the course of her investigation, Cordelia becomes obsessed with the young man's memory and his increasingly suspicious death.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

1982

Radio On poster
5.9

A London radio DJ receives news of his brother's suicide and travels west to Bristol to find out more.

Radio On

1979

Radio On poster
5.9

A London radio DJ receives news of his brother's suicide and travels west to Bristol to find out more.

Radio On

1979

Chinese Boxes poster
6.0

An American in West Berlin finds himself caught up in murder and intrigue after his associate is killed and a diplomat's daughter is found dead in his room.

Chinese Boxes

1984

Chinese Boxes poster
6.0

An American in West Berlin finds himself caught up in murder and intrigue after his associate is killed and a diplomat's daughter is found dead in his room.

Chinese Boxes

1984

The Film That Buys the Cinema poster
NR

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.

The Film That Buys the Cinema

2014

The Cardinal and the Corpse poster
9.0

‘The Cardinal and the Corpse' marks the beginning of Petit’s loose partnership with writer Iain Sinclair. There’s a nod towards narrative here involving a book-search launched by graphic novelist Alan Moore and a dealer (the dapper but barking Driffield), but it’s little more than an excuse to showcase a number of authors and other miscreants.

The Cardinal and the Corpse

1992

The Cardinal and the Corpse poster
9.0

‘The Cardinal and the Corpse' marks the beginning of Petit’s loose partnership with writer Iain Sinclair. There’s a nod towards narrative here involving a book-search launched by graphic novelist Alan Moore and a dealer (the dapper but barking Driffield), but it’s little more than an excuse to showcase a number of authors and other miscreants.

The Cardinal and the Corpse

1992

Moving Pictures: J.G. Ballard poster
8.5

A film essay on Ballard's fiction, and its unrealised cinematic potential, with particular reference to David Cronenberg's (yet to be filmed) Crash, featuring an interview with the director, prior to making of his film.

Moving Pictures: J.G. Ballard

1990

No artwork available
8.0

A woman is being taken from her German hotel to be interrogated by police agents.

Flight to Berlin

1984

No artwork available
8.0

A woman is being taken from her German hotel to be interrogated by police agents.

Flight to Berlin

1984

London Orbital poster
7.0

A filmmaker sets out to make a voyage of discovery on London's orbital motorway, the M25. He enlists the help of several others to film the motorway from several points, drive endlessly around it and dig up stories and potential beauty behind the motorway.

London Orbital

2002

No artwork available
9.0

Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair's liminal, laminal tribute to underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, featuring image manipulation by Dave Mckean & reminiscences from various countercultural characters. A fitting epitaph for an English margin walker.

The Falconer

1998

No artwork available
9.0

Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair's liminal, laminal tribute to underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, featuring image manipulation by Dave Mckean & reminiscences from various countercultural characters. A fitting epitaph for an English margin walker.

The Falconer

1998

Asylum poster
9.0

Asylum is a film very much derived from chaos, expressing implicitly the ideas conjured up by its title. A strange mix of both documentary and fiction, where in the future a group of people are looking back at the twentieth century. A virus has wiped out most of the culture of the twentieth century, leaving just fragments of a project called 'The Perimeter Fence' to be pieced together. These fragments make up a documentary about an exiled group of disparate yet similar minds.

Asylum

2000

Asylum poster
9.0

Asylum is a film very much derived from chaos, expressing implicitly the ideas conjured up by its title. A strange mix of both documentary and fiction, where in the future a group of people are looking back at the twentieth century. A virus has wiped out most of the culture of the twentieth century, leaving just fragments of a project called 'The Perimeter Fence' to be pieced together. These fragments make up a documentary about an exiled group of disparate yet similar minds.

Asylum

2000

Content poster
5.0

Content is an ambient 21st-century road movie, an associative film essay inspired by driving’s trancelike state rather than any linear unfolding of the road.

Content

2010

Suburbs in the Sky poster
8.0

Smile, smile, smile - a witty and informal look at the life and times of the air hostess. Feature-film maker Chris Petit , of Radio On fame, turns his eye to the world of flying, "trolley-dollies", duty-free lives, emergency, sex and shopping. Cabin doors to manual! Welcome aboard!

Suburbs in the Sky

1991

The Telephone poster
NR

A young woman enacts an imaginative revenge on her boyfriend for playing away. Director Chris Petit made this three-minute short to test a new super 16mm Kodak film stock to be used on Peter Greenaway’s upcoming feature The Draughtsman’s Contract.

The Telephone

1981

Radio On Remix poster
7.0

A re-edit of Petit’s Radio On (1980)

Radio On Remix

1998

Unrequited Love poster
NR

Based on an English academic’s memoir on stalking and being stalked, a digital film essay on cinema and absence, on Hitchcock and Antonioni, on cinema and cities. It is a story of waiting, self-delusion, panic, fear of violence, and of modern technologies which define the urban stalker as they do the new terrorist.

Unrequited Love

2006

Unrequited Love poster
NR

Based on an English academic’s memoir on stalking and being stalked, a digital film essay on cinema and absence, on Hitchcock and Antonioni, on cinema and cities. It is a story of waiting, self-delusion, panic, fear of violence, and of modern technologies which define the urban stalker as they do the new terrorist.

Unrequited Love

2006

Negative Space poster
6.7

A portrait of film critic Manny Farber, featuring interviews with Farber and art critic Dave Hickey, as well as inventively displayed clips of the films that Farber discusses.

Negative Space

1999

No artwork available
NR

Chris Petit's experimental take on "Dracula".

The Carfax Fragment

2001

No artwork available
7.0

Some of Petit's works were made for television. In this session, the three films are about three major figures in the English universe: filmmaker Peter Whitehead, novelist and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, and writer J. G. Ballard. In these cinematographic portraits, Petit explores the potentialities of the hybridization between fiction and documentary, building elaborate stories - supported in genres such as the police story - to better define the characters. In the biography of Ballard, we have a curious participation of David Cronenberg about to embark on the adaptation of Crash.

Rudy Wurlitzer

1994

Surveillance poster
7.0

A mini film-essay made up of CCTV footage.

Surveillance

1993

No artwork available
7.0

A short film detailing the ways that TV has failed as a creative and expressive medium in the UK through various sped up and slowed down clips of football, have I got news for you, diana's funeral and footage from chat shows.

Dead TV

1998