Tell me Lies (A Film about London)

An essential film balancing many different tones and registers, and gaining a whole different sense of timeliness in our turbulent times, which might be read as Brook’s love letter to his craft and his country. “Subtitled A Film About London, this drama is a quintessential experimental counter-culture film of the late 1960s that centers on the questions raised by the Vietnam war. Renowned Shakespearean theater director Peter Brook serves as producer and director. It includes many members of the Royal Shakespeare Company ... [who] become obsessed with a photograph of a wounded Vietnamese child and begin discussing the war with their friends and fellow actors... The discussions are combined with newsreel footage in a bizarre collage of images. Moved to do something, the group of actors puts on a series of skits about the war.” (Michael Betzold, The New York Times).

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Peter Brook

Script: Peter Brook, Michael Kustow, Denis Cannan

Cinematography: Ian Wilson

Editing: Ralph Sheldon

Sound: Robert Allen

Music: Richard Peaslee

Actors: Mark Jones, Pauline Munro, Robert Langdon Lloyd, Glenda Jackson, Ian Hogg

Production: Brook Productions, Fondation Groupama Gan, Fondation Technicolor (2012 restoration)

Producers: Peter Brook, Peter Sykes

Production Design: Sally Jacobs

Format: DCP

Color: Color & BW

Production Country: United Kingdom

Production Year: 1968

Duration: 99΄

Contact: Brook Productions

Awards/Distinctions: Jury Special Mention, Luis Buñuel Critics' Prize – Venice IFF 1968

Peter Brook

Peter Brook (1925–2022) was born in London and educated at Oxford. World famous for his pioneering work in theater, in a spectacular career that encompassed more than half of the 20th century, Brook also directed significant films in Britain and France. He made his debut with an adaptation of John Gay’s satirical The Beggars Opera (1953), starring Laurence Olivier. Brook’s next British film, Lord of the Flies (1963), was an adaptation of William Golding’s classic literary parable on the descent of society. Two of Brook’s most famous theatrical productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, The Marat/Sade by German modernist Peter Weiss and Shakespeare’s King Lear, eventually made it into films with very much the same casts as on stage. Brook also directed two drama documentaries; Tell Me Lies (1968), about British anti-Vietnam War sentiment in the late 1960s, and Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), the story of Gurdjieff, an Asian mystic. Since the completion of the latter film, Brook continued his filmmaking career in France. His other film credits include The Mahabharata (1989), The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002), and the documentary The Tightrope (2012), co-directed with his son, filmmaker Simon Brook.

Filmography

1953 The Beggar’s Opera
1960 Moderato Cantabile
1963 Lord of the Flies
1967 Ride of the Valkyrie (short)
1967 Marat/Sade
1968 Tell Me Lies
1971 King Lear
1979 Meetings with Remarkable Men 1979 Mesure pour mesure (TV)
1982 La Cerisaie (TV)
1983 La Tragédie de Carmen
1989 The Mahabharata
2002 The Tragedy of Hamlet (TV)
2012 The Tightrope (co-direction)