Peter Metelerkamp passed away suddenly on Sunday 21 July in South Africa whilst on holiday visiting his family.
Peter was born in South Africa in 1954 and grew up with his two brothers and sister. He was a brilliant student attending the University of Pretoria to study English Literature and Philosophy at the tender age of 16. After gaining his degree he travelled to the UK to study at the London Film School, where his love of film and photography were further developed. He returned to South Africa to do his national service, where he ran the army film unit. Soon after, he gained a postgraduate diploma in adult education from the University of Pretoria. Peter returned to the UK to Bristol during the apartheid era, fleeing from the regime where his then wife was heavily involved with the ANC. Peter applied for a job in the Department of Drama in 1988 taking over directorship of the Postgraduate Diploma in Radio, Film and Television which later became the MA in Film and Television Production, attracting students from all over the world. Peter gained a distinction in an MA in Documentary Photography at The University of Wales Newport in 2004, which further fuelled his interest in photography.
Peter received funding from the AHRC to visit the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 2006-7 to record the legacy of the settler culture and the fate of the descendants of the 1820 Settlers (colonists settled by the British government and the Cape authorities to consolidate the British presence in the region). Peter published several books including A World Made and Lost (2018), a photographic essay on the remaining traces of Settler culture and presence in the small towns of the interior of South Africa’s Eastern Cape.
In his professional life he was obsessively tidy. At the end of every working day he would put a sheet over his computer and keyboard, much to the delight of the housekeeping team. As Graduate Dean from 2010-2017, he sometimes butted heads with University bureaucracy, but he always behaved with good humour and with the needs of the students at heart. He embraced new technologies, often trying out new products and methods for filmmaking and organisation. We remember him encouraging us to embrace online diaries and organisation tools.
It’s no exaggeration to say that his cultural knowledge was vast. He had a voracious appetite for reading, everything from bike maintenance manuals to Dostoevsky to weighty political war histories – and could quote great chunks of them verbatim without breaking a sweat. Naturally, film was an obsession – his grasp and appreciation of global cinema was jaw-dropping .
A few years before his retirement in 2019, a new infatuation – cycling. Peter joined the ranks of the MAMLs (middle aged men in Lycra) and began going on cycling holidays in France and the UK, and regularly rode over 100 miles per day. Two broken collar bones, one of which had him medivacked home from France, did not cool his ardour. He recovered well and was soon back on his bike.
But of all his passions, the greatest of all was of course his family. It was whilst working in the Drama Department that Peter met his future wife Sara Easby. Sara was an accomplished artist and worked in theatre design and costume in the department. They were married in 1993 and welcomed their beloved daughter Ruth in 1994. Peter always spoke of Ruth with tremendous pride in her achievements, and with unmistakable delight when he talked about the pair of them binge-watching CSI-New York.
In terms of legacy, Peter handed over directorship of the MA in 2016, but some of his methods are still followed in the Film and Television Department today.
Many students have sent tributes and remember him fondly; his humour, his commitment, his passion - and the legendary cabbage and apple coleslaw he produced at the end-of-year barbecue.
To us, his close colleagues, he showed respect, trust, support, and underneath all that, deep affection. He knew how to value people, believed in us and encouraged us – without ever saying anything so schmaltzy – to believe in ourselves. He was a great and loving teacher, friend, husband and father, and we will always miss him.