Lawrence Pitkethly, who made and directed several documentary series demonstrated on PBS and other broadcasters, died Feb. 24 at Albany Healthcare Heart near his residence in Hudson, N.Y., of cardiopulmonary arrest connected to issues from Parkinson’s. He was 79.
Pitkethly is finest recognised for “American Cinema” (1995), a 10-section, $7 million sequence for PBS, BBC and Canal In addition covering U.S. filmmaking that he created, co-wrote and co-directed. It examined movie genres, the increase and slide of the studio system, the development of stars and other aspects of American films via interviews with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Sydney Pollack, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Joel Coen and other significant gamers. John Lithgow served as host Matthew Modine, Kathleen Turner and Cliff Robertson narrated.
Earlier, Pitkethly co-wrote and co-directed “Voices and Visions” (1988), a 13-component sequence on American poets, which profiled artists like Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath.
Significantly of Pitkethly’s function was made by means of the Center for Visual Background, his New York-centered documentary store that generated and distributed applications from 1979 to 1997. Displays spawned through the firm involve “Ezra Pound: American Odyssey” (1985), as properly as docs on the WPA and “The Speaking Treatment,” a study of psychoanalysis.
Pitkethly started off his vocation in London in the 1960s. He worked as a author, on-digital camera correspondent and presenter at the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Most notably, he described from Belfast, his hometown, throughout the beginning of The Problems – the 30-calendar year bloody conflict in Northern Ireland amongst Irish Republicans and Ulster Loyalists.
In 1975, Pitkethly moved to the U.S., wherever he taught movie at Hampshire School in Massachusetts when also creating and directing an array of documentaries, which include “The New South,” four films for the BBC inspecting the pivotal part of the region in American modern society and politics.
Pitkethly transferred to Paris in the 1990s, in which he served set up the Movie Office at the American College of Paris. While in France, he wrote, co-directed and appeared in “Belfast My Appreciate,” a 90-minute documentary on the Northern Eire Peace Accord for ARTE and RTE. He returned to New York in 2015.
He is survived by his daughter, Camille Pitkethly, and his stepdaughter, Chloe Schulberg.
