Richard Woolley

Experimental short contrasting the grey interior of a house with the vibrant colour of its garden. Sunlight shines through leafy trees. The camera zooms in until the image is out of focus. When it zooms out again, it reveals sunlight through leaves reflected in the window of a house. From inside the house, we see a woman, in colour and fully dressed, walk by a window. Outside, the camera and photographer are seen in a mirror. The woman, in black & white now and inside the house nude, walks around a large room, trapped. Further images of the naked woman are interspersed with colour images of the garden outside: pond, lilies, etc. Eventually, the image of the cameraman and his mirror returns and the reflection in the window and the sunshine through trees are repeated.

Film made as competition entry for Chicago Film festival. Theme was ‘Freedom’. Woolley’s entry was dark and pessimistic with a man’s life moving from forceps delivery, through bullying at school to climbing into a coffin.

Complex but compelling investigation of sound/image relationship shot in Berlin. Top prize at Knokke-le-Zoute film festival l975.

Man trapped in front of – and then inside – a television, as a Tory political broadcast swirls around him.

Thriller about the murder of a prostitute. Centred round the lives and life styles of two brothers at the time of the murder. As the film progresses and the events of the murder night unfold, it emerges that both brothers - perhaps all men - are suspect.

ANNE is the daughter of well-to-do parents in the South of England.One morning, bored with Granny's attempts to entertain her, she leaves the safety of the rich suburbs and sets out towards 'the poorer part of town' determined to meet her own real-life, tall dark stranger. Walking up a street of back-to-back houses – and still in her daydream – ANNE bumps into an old woman sending her shopping flying. A lucky accident as the old woman's grandson, RALPH, turns out to be exactly the boy she is looking for... well, nearly – he does have a strange penchant for art galleries and Elgar. But ANNE doesn't only fall in love. Discovering that not everyone is as rich as her, she determines to balance things out by persuading RALPH to take part in an unusual form of burglary. She assures him that if things go wrong, she will own up and say it was her fault. "They'll never believe you!" says Ralph. And they don't.

Experimental narrative dealing with female oppression/class control. Controversial at time, especially among feminists.

Deals with filmic reality and conformity in East and West. Won acclaim at 1976 Edinburgh Festival.

A pioneering documentary in 1969, looking at the situation of gay men in the UK two years after the 1967 Reform Act, and revealing how attitudes have changed. It includes unique interviews with the Bill's initiator, Leo Abse; Peter Manolt, the Editor of the bi-sexual/gay magazine 'Jeremy'; social workers who regard 'gayness' as something to be 'cured'; the only gay man found willing to appear on camera at that time, and members of the public on the streets of London and Leeds.

TELLING TALES is about the failing marriage of an industrialist and his wife, about the industrialist's wish to sell his company to a colleague, Paul Roberts, and about the terminally ill wife of Paul, Ingrid. It is also about the shop steward organising a strike at Paul's factory that jeopardises the deal with the industrialist, and about the wife of the shop steward, who happens to clean and cook for the industrialist. A network of intertwined tales told in different ways, and for very different motives, by the main protagonists.

WAITING FOR ALAN is about a woman whose marriage is dead. Trapped in the rich but sterile environment of a lavishly appointed country house, MARCIA is a microcosm of society – a victim of, and partner in, someone else's routine. It’s not the housework or the cooking (MRS BETTS looks after those), but the daily monotony of waiting for ALAN – her newspaper-reading, TV watching husband. To him, she's just the emotional central heating switched on and off in return for paying the bills and expected to operate as smoothly and regularly as the washing-up machine or the gardener. But MARCIA has waited long enough… WAITING FOR ALAN is a humorous but critical 'tale of the unexpected' (and expected) in classical, three-movement sonata form. It was screened at least twice on Channel Four television in the late eighties and both times received a very positive audience response as well as praise from weekly pre-viewers in the newspapers