Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway (Newport, April 5, 1942), is a British film director, who trained in the plastic arts, specifically painting.

Biography and career

At a very early age, Greenaway decided he wanted to be a painter and developed an interest in European cinema, particularly films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alain Resnais.

In 1962 he began studies at the Walthamstow College of Art, where he shared courses with the musician Ian Dury with whom he would later work on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. At Walthamstow College he made his first short film titled Death of Sentiment and it was set around objects from a churchyard: crosses, flying angels, typeface carved into rock. The movie was filmed in four London cemeteries.

In 1965 he joined the Central Office of Information (COI), where he worked for 15 years as editor and editor. In 1966 he directed Train, with footage of the last steam train arriving at Waterloo station, which was located just behind his IOC workplace. An abstract style film influenced by Fernand Léger and his Ballet mécanique , all assembled by cuts on a soundtrack of concrete music. In 1966 he also directed Tree, the protagonist being a tree in London's Royal Festival Hall that was completely surrounded by concrete.

The 1970s will see a more serious Greenaway develop in 1978's Vertical Features Remake and A Walk Through H. The first, a study on shapes with arithmetic structures, and the second, a journey through various maps.

In 1980 Greenaway produced his most ambitious work to date, entitled The Falls: a fantastic monster, an encyclopedia of the absurd of material associated with flight, with the law of gravity, 92 victims of something he called (VUE) "Violent Unknown Event" or Unknown Violent Event. The '80s saw Greenaway's best films: The Cartoonist's Contract in 1982, A Zed & Two Noughts in 1985, The Architect's Belly in 1987, Conspiracy of Women in 1988 and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover in 1989, his best-known film by the public.

The 1990s gave us the most visually compelling: The Books of Prospero in 1991, the controversial The Baby of Mâcon in 1993, The Pillow Book in 1996 and 8 1/2Women in 1999.

The three films of The Tulse Luper Suitcases from 2003, 2004 and 2005, and Nightwatching from 2007 (about the painting The Night Watch by Rembrandt) are his latest films for the big screen, multimedia extravaganzas that include the most innovative techniques.^{[citation needed]}

On Peter Greenaway's mind is the attitude that we haven't seen what cinema can be yet, as stated above. His ambition is to try to reinvent it.

He exhibited videos of his creation at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, in the Árbol del Aire of the Madrid pavilion, in an initiative carried out by the Open This End group.

Filmography

Movies

• The Falls (1980, 185 min)
• The Contract of the Drawer (1982, 103 min)
• A Zed " Two Noughts " (1985, 115 min)
• The belly of the architect (1987, 120 min)
• Conspiracy of women (1988, 118 min)
• The cook, the thief, his wife and his lover (1989, 123 min)
• Prospero's booksadaptation The tempest of Shakespeare (1991, 129 min)
• The Baby of Mâcon (1993, 122 min)
• The Pillow Book (1996, 126 min)
• 81⁄2 Women (1999, 118 min)
• Tulse Luper's bags
  • Part 1: The Moab Story (2003, 127 min)
  • Part 2: Vaux to the Sea (2003, 108 min)
  • Part 3: From Sark to the Finish (2003, 120 min)
• Nightwatching (2007, 134 min)
• Rembrandt's J'Accuse (2008, 86 min)
• Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012, 128 min)
• 3x3D (An episode film co-directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Edgar Pêra) (2013, 70 min)
• Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015, 105 min)

Awards and distinctions

Cannes International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival