Pettigrew's mother was a child psychologist. His father, Dr. J.F. Pettigrew, was the first Canadian surgeon to diagnose the heart condition known as aortic coarctation in 1953.[3]
After reading English, French and Italian Literature at the universities of Bishop's, Oxford, and Glasgow (where he discovered the work of Scottish film director Bill Douglas), Pettigrew studied cinema at IDHEC in Paris. At the Cinémathèque Française, he met Brion Gysin and Steve Lacy and began frequenting their artists' circle. If his work is influenced by Gysin's celebrated cut-up technique, the profound and lasting effect on his life was his friendship with Samuel Beckett.
In 1983, Pettigrew launched a remake of Film (film) (1965) starring Klaus Kinski, with Beckett as consultant and Raoul Coutard as cameraman.[4] Kinski’s scheduling, however, proved intractable. Beckett next proposed Jack Lemmon for the role but the project was abandoned when Lemmon explained he was incapable of competing with Buster Keaton (who first played the roles of O and E in 1965). With Beckett and Pettigrew in 1984, the actor David Warrilow initiated Take 2, a tentative sequel to Film, but the project remained unfinished at the playwright's death in 1989.[5] In 1990, Pettigrew settled in Paris to devote himself to filmmaking.
In 1999, he co-founded Portrait et Compagnie with French producer Olivier Gal. He spends a short part of each year on Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.[6]
A mid-career retrospective of his work in film was held at the Centre des Arts d'Enghien-les-Bains from 5 October 2011 to 28 March 2012.[12] His informal discussion with Ingmar Bergman (conducted in the fall of 2003 at Fårö Island) on the Swedish director's affinities with Samuel Beckett's work was published in L’Âge d’or du cinéma européen in 2011.[13]
Pettigrew is currently directing the first feature-length documentary on Carolyn Carlson, the France-based American dancer and choreographer. Begun in January 2012 and continuing into 2021, the film focuses on the creation of several major works by Carlson including Synchronicity (2012), Dialogue with Rothko (2013) and Woman in a Room with Diana Vishneva, principal dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre, Black Over Red (2017) with Marie-Agnès Gillot, star dancer at the Paris Opéra Ballet, as well as her latest choreography titled The Tree (2021).[19]
In development
In development are two feature films: Darkness Visible starring Tim Roth and Eriq Ebouaney,[20] and Beckett, based on the director's experience working with Samuel Beckett.
This bibliography is focused on the published interviews that were filmed, produced and directed by Pettigrew in collaboration with the following artists:
The Paris Review Interviews - The Art of Fiction, No. 130. (Issue 124, Fall 1992).
"Sogno e delirio. Il Calvino segreto" in La Repubblica, 10 September 1995.[22]
Uno scrittore pomeridiano. Intervista sull'arte della narrativa a cura di William Weaver e Damien Pettigrew con un ricordo di Pietro Citati. Roma: Minimum fax, 2003 (ISBN8887765863).
Essays on cinema
« Ascenseur (les objets felliniens) » in Fellinicittà (ed. J-M. Méjean). Paris: Editions de la Transparence, 2009 (ISBN978-2-35700-008-7).
« Trois films, trois sourires : quelques regards sur Bergman » in L’Age d’or du cinéma Européen 1950-1970 (ed. Denitza Bantcheva). Chatou: Editions du Revif, 2011.(ISBN978-2-35051-046-0).
Interviews online
« Les dernières interrogations de Pierre Emmanuel » in Le Monde (7 October 1984) Interview with Pierre Emmanuel
^Interview with Pettigrew and Caroline Caldier, Radio France, 4 May 2003.
^Cited in No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (ed. Maurice Harmon, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 442-443
^Cited in Pettigrew's correspondence with Beckett and David Warrilow archived at Emory University in Atlanta, home to the Beckett Correspondence Project under the direction of Lois Overbeck and Martha Fehsenfeld.
^Radio France interview with Pettigrew and Caroline Caldier, accessed 12 August 2021.
^David Denby, The New Yorker, April 21, 2003. Based on the maestro's last interviews filmed by Pettigrew in 1991–1992 (Fellini died in 1993), the film was selected in over 40 international festivals including Edinburgh, Moscow, Amsterdam, Cannes and Montréal, distributed theatrically in 15 countries, and sold to television worldwide (source: MK2 International).
^For example, Fellini declares that "Tullio Pinelli wrote, for all intents and purposes, the script of La Strada". Fellini and Pettigrew, I’m a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon, 89
^Davenport was an early shaping influence on the film and contributed valuable insight in a series of letters to Pettigrew between 1995 and 1996. Their correspondence is archived at L'Arche éditeur (Paris) under the direction of Rudolf Rach. See also Davenport's A Balthus Notebook (New York: Ecco Press, 1989) for a seminal essay on the French artist's work.
^In Balthus or Time Suspended: Paintings and Drawings (1932–1960). Cologne: Museum Ludwig, 2007.