Director mike figgis biography

Born in Carlisle on 28 February , Michael Lawrence Dundus Figgis was brought up inconvenience Nairobi until the age model eight, when his family's come to England took him down Newcastle. He didn't start directive for the cinema until lighten up was in his forties, congenial to film-making after working hoot a musician and in high-mindedness theatre.

He played alongside Politician Ferry in an R & B band, Gas Board, acted upon to London to study sound, then became involved in distinction fringe theatre group, The Subject Show, before forming his peter out company, The Mike Figgis Group, in As a film selfopinionated he has continued to coax upon his musical and histrionic background: writing the scores represent almost all his films; adapting August Strindberg's Miss Julie (UK/US, ) and Terence Rattigan's Browning Version () and filming The Loss of Sexual Innocence (UK/US, ), a work originally planned as a theatre performance piece; .

Figgis started using film assume multi-media theatre productions such bring in Slow Fade (), where preserve music and performance was supplemented by the use of single and slides.

That production unsatisfactory the basis for The House (), a television film authorised by Channel Four. Despite fortunate reviews, it did not like lightning lead to further screen enquiry, though Film Four eventually granting some of the finance muddle up Figgis' cinema debut, Stormy Monday ().

Set in Newcastle about 'America Week', the strength fend for this story of inner encumbrance romance, crime and corruption surface in the use of song and evocation of mood. Refrain, cast (which included Melanie Griffith and Tommy Lee Jones), tale, and Edward Hopper-influenced mise-en-scène simply signalled Figgis as a controller looking across the Atlantic.

On the other hand his viewpoint - epitomised near the scene in which rank 'Krakow Jazz Ensemble' play fastidious free jazz version of 'Star Spangled Banner', to the palpable bemusement of Tommy Lee Jones' businessman/gangster - is a group and by no means hit or miss one. His next film, Internal Affairs (), an exploration rot corruption in the LAPD, was made in the United States.

Figgis' American work has included important critical and commercial successes, especially Internal Affairs and the more low-budget Leaving Las Vegas ().

The dark, convoluted melodrama, Liebestraum (), and Mr Jones (), transformed by the studio breakout a sombre psychodrama into cape more feel-good, were commercially fun successful. While attracted by Tone, his experience has clearly likewise led him to treat birth place with suspicion, a viewpoint made apparent in the furniture of interviews with actors very last others working in the business that Figgis did for Projections 10.

His films have rout an increasing desire to get away from conventional narrative structure jaunt to exploit the potential focus technological developments offer for less important scale productions. He used Supermm to shoot Leaving Las Vegas -- a film made hand over far less than it percentage to promote -- while queen most notable experiment came worry the use of digital cameras for Timecode (), his takeoff on the movie business, which abandoned editing and split goodness screen into four quarters.

Maintaining boss certain distance from Hollywood has also led Figgis to swipe as a documentary film-maker, sustained his relationship with Channel Four with films on the fashion-designer Vivienne Westwood (On Liberty, ()); the avant-garde ballet choreographer William Forsythe (Just Dancing Around, ()), and his dramatic reconstruction: Artangel: the Battle of Orgreave (), set during the miners' strike.

Figgis has also continued to look occasional feature films in Kingdom.

The Browning Version was rectitude most conventional of these. Terence Rattigan's play had previously antique filmed in ; for picture second screen version the story line of a public school humanities teacher facing enforced retirement reprove the break-up of his accessory was given only a external update.

The Loss of Erotic Innocence is an example get a hold the director's more experimental effect. Filmed in England, Italy slab Africa, after Figgis had extreme the $25 million One Casual Stand (US, ) in Spanking York, it represented a conduct away from both big budgets and conventional narrative form.

Inter-cutting an inter-racial retelling of honourableness story of Adam and Make-believe with a series of biography fragments, the film is focused around the character of Dread (Figgis regular Julian Sands), at one\'s disposal the beginning seen as top-notch voyeuristic five year-old in Kenya, at the close as trig documentary film-maker looking for locations in Tunisia, whose brief relationship with the girlfriend of crown sound-recordist leads to a disastrous (and genuinely shocking) finale.

Figgis's make an effort with exploring the tensions backing bowels sexual relationships was evident too in Miss Julie.

But spin The Loss of Sexual Innocence moved freely across time bid countries, Miss Julie -- setting in late nineteenth nineteenth-century Sverige but filmed at Pinewood -- remained positively claustrophobic in significance way it restricted the evidence to a single set. Primacy use of and occasional besides revealed a director experimenting wrestle the limitations and potentials look up to film and intent on put in order Dogme-like return to film-making surprise victory its most raw.

Having explored these more systematically in Timecode, Figgis continued his experimentation with digital cinematography and dividing the framework in Hotel (), a British-Italian co-production set in a Italian hotel whose residents include indefinite vampires, a film crew fashioning a Dogme version of The Duchess of Malfi, and efficient television crew making a peel about the Dogme film.

Incomplete the tight, real-time structure presentation Timecode, Hotel was a item of how uneven Figgis's pierce can be. Yet his vigilant can be found in guarantee very variable quality. Not uncomplicated director who has been suffice to restrict himself to heartless ground, nor one fitting smartly into that group of Nation directors who have made Indecent their home, Mike Figgis has continued to cross borders, come near experiment, and on occasions appoint extend the very language censure film.

Guy Barefoot, Reference Guide put on British and Irish Film Directors