A Pop Art-styled fever dream, Daddy is multi-disciplinary artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s first feature film, which she starred in and co-directed with Peter Whitehead, a key observer of 1960s counterculture. Initially proposed by Whitehead as a pseudo-documentary to showcase Saint Phalle’s sculpture and paintings, Daddy became a far more daring cinematic experiment during their eighteen-month collaboration, which started soon after Saint Phalle’s marriage to Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely.

An exuberant exorcism of patriarchy—especially as it pertains to men’s dominance over female bodies, the family unit, religion, as well as in the art and culture sectors—Daddy also deals with the artist’s childhood trauma in its often-graphic allusions to repressed angst and sexual desire. A true testament to the artist and the times in which it was made, Daddy is Saint Phalle’s most unapologetic act of self-liberation.

The screening on 1 November will be followed by a post-screening talk in English with Chanel Kong, Curator of Moving Image.

Niki de Saint Phalle is one of the featured artists in the M+ exhibition Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now.

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) was a French American multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and film director. She was celebrated for her depiction of the colourful frolicking female character “Nanas” that usually appears in the form of paintings and sculptures. Saint Phalle also created videos, moving image projects, and performance documentation, and appeared as the subject of numerous documentary portraits. Her work often examines notions of childhood, femininity, gender oppression, violence, and joy. In collaboration with filmmaker Peter Whitehead, Saint Phalle directed her first feature-length film, Daddy (1973), exploring the subject of familial trauma. She also made the poetic feminist fairytale Un rêve plus long que la nuit (A dream longer than the night) (1976).

Peter Whitehead (1937–2019, United Kingdom) was an English filmmaker and writer who documented the counterculture in London and New York in the late 1960s. Whitehead was known for directing The Benefit of the Doubt (1967), Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts (2009), and Fire in the Water (1977), as well as co-directing Daddy (1973).