Peter weir biography

He has received six Academy Award nominations. In , he was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime achievement career.

Peter weir best movies

Early in his career as a director, Weir was a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement — Weir made his feature film debut with Homesdale , and continued with the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock , the supernatural thriller The Last Wave and the historical drama Gallipoli Weir gained tremendous success with the multinational production The Year of Living Dangerously After the success of The Year of Living Dangerously , Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films covering most genres—many of them major box office hits—including Academy Award -nominated films such as the thriller Witness , the drama Dead Poets Society , the romantic comedy Green Card , the social science fiction comedy-drama The Truman Show and the epic historical drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World His final feature before his retirement was the well-received The Way Back His interest in film was sparked by him meeting fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films.

After leaving university in the mids, he joined Sydney television station ATN-7 , where he worked as a production assistant on the groundbreaking satirical comedy program The Mavis Bramston Show. Sir Robert Helpmann saw the show and took it to the Adelaide Festival. Weir took a position with the Commonwealth Film Unit later renamed Film Australia , [ 6 ] for which he made several documentaries, including a short documentary about an underprivileged outer Sydney suburb, Whatever Happened to Green Valley , in which residents were invited to make their own film segments.

He also directed one section of the three-part, three-director feature film 3 to Go , which won an AFI award.