If one compiled a list of British film-makers who came to prominence in the 1980s it would inevitably feature the names Derek Jarman, Neil Jordan and Peter Greenaway. Chris Petit would be notable by his absence. Jordan went to Hollywood, Greenaway tapped into European art-movie subsidies and Jarman was posthumously sanctified as a heritage icon malgre lui. Petit, however, simply disappeared. But as a British critic-turned-filmmaker, he was an anomaly to start out with. A period as film editor on Time Out between 1973 and 1978 was followed, in 1979, by his debut feature, Radio On. With no background in filmmaking, Petit made the quintessential British road movie, assisted by Wim Wenders as co-producer and others from the Wenders company.
Almost 20 years later, Radio On remains fascinating, less for its minimal narrative of a young man travelling from London to Bristol to investigate his brother's suicide than for the historical density that it has accrued. Radio On stands up now as the definitive post- punk, long mac movie; shot in a black-and-white that leaches into slate-grey, scored with Kraftwerk and Low-era Bowie - as well as featuring a cameo by Sting as a petrol- pump attendant, Radio On announced a directorial sensibility that was alien to British film.
So alien, in fact, that, after a stab at adapting PD James for the screen with An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1981), Petit took off for Germany where he made two films back-to-back. Flight to Berlin (1993) and Chinese Boxes (1984) are thrillers that take plot convolution and narrative origami as the organising logic in their take on conspiracy, crime and betrayal.
He relates an anecdote that encapsulates the fate of the forgotten, or at least misremembered, British film director. "I remember going to a party and seeing Lindsay Anderson standing on the other side of the room. A couple of people went over and said, `We just want to say how much we admire Lawrence of Arabia.' They realised they'd dropped a brick, retreated, then went back and said, `Sorry, we meant Doctor Zhivago.' "
After a short, unproductive stint as an executive at Palace Pictures, Petit dropped off the map. But there appears to be something of a rediscovery of his career underway. After all, Petit has produced a body of work that spans 20 years, and takes in film, television and video, journalism and novels.
The first sign of this interest came in Iain Sinclair's collection of essays on London, Lights out for the Territory. Sinclair's definitive cultural history of the capital includes a renegade re- reading of British film history. Ignoring the standard account of social-realism and costume dramas, Sinclair favours the maverick, visionary trajectory of film-makers such as Michael Reeves, Patrick Keiller and Petit himself, who Sinclair describes as "one of the most gifted film essayists of his generation".
But then Sinclair is partial, having worked with Petit on two films for Channel 4, The Cardinal and the Corpse in 1992 and their forthcoming collaboration, The Falconer.
This new film, a "fictional documentary" on the Sixties British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, is another reason why the Petit profile may well rise above the parapet. A work of lucid experimentalism, The Falconer reveals Petit in another guise, as a manipulator of his Hi 8 video and re-filmed Super-8.
In short, it is clear that he has remained a film-maker even while pursuing what he describes as "the day job", writing novels.
"There is still the idea that 35mm is the big one," he says. "The thing that always used to annoy me about the film-making process was how cumbersome it was. Even with a small crew you have to wait too long. Nothing about the process has changed since the Model T Ford."
If Petit's evident discomfort with institutionalised cinema led him first to quit what he calls `grown-up film-making", in the long- run his has been a productive alienation from convention.
"The areas that interest me are where the commercial and the avant-garde overlap," he explains. "In commercial terms I've probably been too wayward and not canny enough at dealing with that system. And on the other hand, I've never belonged to the enfranchised avant- garde.
"For example, Radio On was never screened by Channel 4 because it was seen as not being `political' enough. When it came out it was at a time when there were enormous divisions in film culture and the film was seen as frivolous and politically shallow."
Dead TV, a new work-in-progress that will be screened in the Bristol mini-retrospective, indicates that video has given Petit the essayist a new direction.
"Dead TV came out of the notion that there was all these dead images. It was something I used to reassure myself when I wasn't filming, that everything had been shot to death anyway, that there's a kind of global image-turning. Dead TV was about this, and the thought of how much rubbish you need to fill up this space and time."
Dead TV includes two recent iconic TV moments; the Ian Hislop and Paula Yates head-to-head from Have I Got News For You and the Wright/Schmeichel penalty area collision. Petit refilms both of these to make them a drama of pixellation and texture; in deconstructing them, he remakes them anew.
There is an English dystopian romanticism to Petit's sensibility that brings him close to JG Ballard, the subject of another of his film essays, but with Ballard's surrealism replaced by Petit's fascination with secrecy and cover-up and a refined eye for landscapes both urban and rural.
But he is guarded about returning to a set. "My producer tells me he is sure I've got another film left in me, but I'm not sure. The system in British TV and cinema has a crippling lack of imagination, and my memory of production is being told that you can't have. If somebody said, `Do you want to do this?', I'd have to think hard about whether I want to see a track again."
`Radio On' screens at The Watershed Centre, Bristol, tomorrow at 2pm. The programme includes Petit's short films, and he will be present to take questions. Details: 0117 925 3845.
(Copyright 1998 Newspaper Publishing PLC)