PERCEPTION OF LIFE (1964)
30 MINS

Whitehead's first film made professionally
A Scientific Documentary.

"I didn't really like it at the time, I became more interested in it later, because it was all shot through microscopes - a half hour film made for the Nufffield Foundation documenting the history of man's changing concepts of living matter, I wasn't only using a camera, I was always filming through the microscopes, Many sequences were filmed through some of the first primitive microscopes that scientists had used. We see what they saw, and why they described their ideas in the ways they did. Later, I realised that all my films related to the idea of using a camera like a microscope. Ever since, I have always been aware that the camera stands between me and the truth, often concealing as much as it reveals. All truth is relative anyway, but especially within the process of filming … "
Peter Whitehead 1974