Peter Clifton

Peter Clifton (born 1945) is an Australian film director and producer, perhaps best known for his direction of the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same (1976).

Clifton was born in Sydney and had experience in music film production prior to his involvement with Led Zeppelin, having filmed Jimi Hendrix live in concert and a planned reggae film in Jamaica. In 1974 Led Zeppelin hired him to finish the job on their concert film begun by director Joe Massot, who had recently been fired by the band.

In 2006, it was reported that a 16 mm reel of the Apollo 11 moon landing belonging to Clifton, which had been held for 20 years in a Sydney vault as part of his personal film catalogue, was rediscovered. Clifton had ordered the reel in 1979 for a rock film he was making about Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, ordering the film for $US180 from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC but forgot he had it until seeing a news report on television.

The footage of Neil Armstrong's "one small step" is considered among the most important artefacts of the 20th century but the original NASA tapes have been mislaid somewhere in the US. It is hoped documentation associated with Mr Clifton's reel will help direct researchers to the warehouse or museum where the missing tapes are stored - if they still exist.