Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBEis a British film director, screenwriter, and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his film are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth5 April 1942
days films people
These days more films are going to people than people are going to films,
people
I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.
love-you people
I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you.
interesting people obsession
My personal obsessions are much more interesting to me than other people's.
people cinema enthusiasm
I still would like you to feel the enthusiasm that all those people felt in the twenties and thirties, that indeed we had discovered, with cinema, the great 20th-century, all-embracing medium.
mistake giving people
My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded.
people massage film
That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.
hero people would-be
My heroes among filmmakers would be people like Buñuel and Pasolini, who were of very high cinematic intelligence, but tread on a lot of toes.
ideas people renoir
Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.
book collected died father five knowledge loss notes scattered small suitcases
My father died. His ornithological knowledge, never collected or collated in anything like a comprehensible book - it was five suitcases and two trunks of scattered notes - died with him. A loss of knowledge. I made a film in small part reparation.
angry capital city composed emotional fall famous gallery immediate national opposed process reaction regarding
You don't go into the National Gallery of any famous capital city and cry, sob, laugh, fall about on the floor, become very angry - it's a completely different reaction. It's a reaction which is to do with a much more composed sense of regarding an image; it's a reaction with a thought process as opposed to an immediate emotional reaction.
either films
I think it is really important to be in some way provocative - either intellectually or viscerally - in the films one makes.
emotional thinking doctors
I always think that if you deal with extremely emotional, even melodramatic, subject matter, as I constantly do, the best way to handle those situations is at a sufficient remove. It's like a doctor and a nurse and a casualty situation. You can't help the patient and you can't help yourself by emoting. And I don't think cinema is intended for therapy, so I object also to that huge, massive manipulation which is perpetrated on the public.
scratches
Itch to read, scratch to understand.