Mark Kidel

Mark Kidel is a film-maker, writer and critic specialising in the arts and music. He works mainly in the UK and France. His films are often featured at leading international festivals as well as honoured worldwide. Recent films include “Set the Piano Stool on Fire” – a film about Alfred Brendel and the young pianist Kit Armstrong, “Saved By Music: The Wallfisch Family”, “Soweto Strings “, “A Journey with Peter Sellars”, “Hungary 1956: Our Revolution”, the first-ever profile of video artist Bill Viola, and a film exploring Paris’s brothels. His documentary portraits have included Ravi Shankar,,the pianists Alfred Brendel and Leon Fleisher , Bill Viola, Norman Foster, Robert Wyatt, Tricky, Derek Jarman, Boy George, the 20th century composers Varèse and Xenakis. He has also made a number of films on African music, personal film essays on melancholia, the cultural and metaphorical, an exploration of death, loss and memory filmed as one of Paris’s oldest hospitals was closing down, and a ground-breaking series on architecture and symbolism . He has written widely about music for most of the leading newspapers in the UK. He is a co-founder with Peter Gabriel of WOMAD, the world music festival. Current work includes a film about the artist Brian Clarke as well as major portraits of John Adams and Elvis Costello.