Nowhere Boy

Sam Taylor-Wood (born March 4, 1967) is an English filmmaker, photographer and conceptual artist. Her directorial feature film debut was the 2009 Nowhere Boy, a film based on the childhood experiences of The Beatles songwriter and singer John Lennon.

Taylor-Wood began exhibiting fine art photography of young fruitful men in the early-1990s. One collaboration with Henry Bond, titled 26 October 1993, featured Bond and Taylor-Wood pastiching the roles of Yoko Ono and John Lennon in the manner of the photo-portrait made—by photographer Annie Leibovitz—a few hours before Lennon was assassinated, in 1980. In 1994, she exhibited a multi-screen video work titled Killing Time, in which four people mimed to an opera score. From that point multi-screen video works became the main focus of Taylor-Wood’s work. Beginning with the video works Travesty of a Mockery and Pent-Up in 1996. Taylor-Wood was nominated for the annual Turner Prize in 1997, but lost out to fellow YBA artist Gillian Wearing. She won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2002, Taylor-Wood was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a video portrait of David Beckham—whom she depicted sleeping.

In 2008, Taylor-Wood directed a short film Love You More, written by Patrick Marber and produced by Anthony Minghella. The film includes two songs by Buzzcocks and features a cameo appearance by the band’s lead singer Pete Shelley. In February 2009, Sam Taylor-Wood, collaborating with Sky Arts chose to interpret Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci. She commented: “I’m really happy to be involved in such a great project. I think by capturing one of opera’s most moving moments in a film short, we have put a modern spin on the aria.”

In August 2008, Taylor-Wood was chosen to direct Nowhere Boy, a biopic about the childhood of The Beatles singer, John Lennon. The 53rd annual London Film Festival screened the film as its closing presentation on 29 October 2009. The film was released in the UK on Boxing Day, 2009. Charles Gant, writing in The Guardian—three weeks after the film’s national release—said that the film had “extremely disappointing receipts.” Taylor-Wood was nominated for a BAFTA award on 21 January 2010, but lost out to Duncan Jones. –Wikipedia