I've been an admirer of Peter Greenaway since I first saw his DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT in the 1980's and I recently watched REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE. Both are very fine films. I'm looking forward to seeing his EISENSTEIN film. Trained as a painter, he is, without question, a visual connoisseur and a highly engaging, articulate personality. While I relish the opportunity to view his work, his exploring one medium after another (painting, cinema, new media) doesn't mean the death of one of them. Proclaiming the cinema to be dead is pompous. The novel may not be the main source of artistic consumption now as it was in the 19th century but novels are still being written, including fine ones and people are reading them. Painting is no longer on the level of the the Renaissance Masters but that's not the point, works of quality are still being made by contemporary artists. Greenaway says the cinema died in 1983 because now we have different and newer gadgets to play with and we can control how we view it. It's like saying, painting is dead because we can buy a print of a work of art or even upload it to our mobile phone. Also, let me think of some of the films I've seen since 1983... Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR, Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Gianni Amelio's OPEN DOORS, the late Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE, Terry Zwigoff's CRUMB, Gaspar Noe's I STAND ALONE, David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR., Paolo Sorrentino's THE GREAT BEAUTY and Greenaway's own work. Those are just a few examples that I picked out in a few seconds. I could go on and list more and more films by the same directors and others. His post-modern, deconstructionist take on cinema is undeniably pleasurable at times but also irritating and short sighted. Irritating because his avalanche of sights, sounds and words do not always consolidate, as they did for Orson Welles, for example. Short sighted because the cinema is also an industry and as Welles himself reportedly once said, anyone who doesn't think money plays a part in it is a fool. It's difficult enough for serious film-makers to get funding for their projects, they shouldn't be told that they need to abandon text (the script), stop directing actors, etc... let alone that the medium is dead. The cinema is the most incestuous art form there is. It has stolen from every other medium - literature, music, painting, theatre, you name it. That is its genius. There is no one way of doing film just as there is no one philosophy. There are only philosophers and film-makers. Thanks just the same, Mr. Greenaway.
"Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced". Peter Greenaway Come on! It should be noted that September has 30 days.
The conversations of the characters from wall to wall reminds me of a vision I've had of creating 3D characters who move around the space that the audience might interact with such that each person does not see or hear quite the same. There is a name for such 3D characters....but it escapes me...Oh Hologram...yes that might even be done so that a live performance might happen in several places and the performers could view all the different audiences too.
Why sit in the dark with a bunch of strangers and share your emotions? Well... some people actually LIKE communal activities. Being in a group makes me feel more human.
Yes there is image-based cinema. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh and Sergei Parajanov's 3 movies (The Color of Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress, Ashik Kerib). Maybe others too. Their movies might have started wiuth a script, but the script is just an excuse, or else a thin threadwork that holds together a wealth of imagery.
Actually image based cinema started way before Paradjanov .Try the American female Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage (they're just the famous ones I would have to do a little research to find what was happenig all over he world maybe even before them.in the 1940's with Maya Deren .. Everyone know this .I'm sure they were not he first .Melies and Franjus ere basically image based but there was a beginning and end which is narrative even when the end comes first or any of the various forms of non-linear cinema and what else was silent cinema when there was no dialogue also some of he first interests erewatching recreated painting tableauux live. This was a form of theatre -intertainment in the 19th century. Go back to your textbooks or notes from our classes .Im just remembering from my rabid chasing of film -history and entertainment of all forms
He talks a good concept but his best works all rely on narrative to hang his lovely, dense info-packed pictures on otherwise why would anyone spend 2 hours looking at a moving screen.
There are several pioneers of video art, and a whole army of their successors. If Greenaway has finally discovered the video installation medium, good for him, but it doesn't make him eligible to play a prophet on cinema's destiny. Perhaps he is right in his "notions", but he missed the whole 500 years - he should have preached this at that time in camera obscura rooms, since he hasn't moved from the renaissance fascination. But, all this is rather about survival of the artist's ego, much more than a real concern about the path of the cinema, let alone the 2 mil € Nokia bull - the info he was so eager to share in "BTW" fashion.
Present tense non-narrative cinema. But what are the politics of such a medium? I don't understand how Greenaway's political commitments are harmonized with these ideas. Maybe they move in tandem, I just don't get it.
I just watched this again and found it much less articulate, to say the least. I'd say outright stupid at times. There's a lot of things that Americans can and should be criticized on but to deny them one of their brightest sons is ludicrous. Orson Welles was American. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Sure, he travelled with his father abroad to Europe and Asia and his first real theatrical experience was at the Gate Theatre in Dublin but he was a boy from the American Midwest. He revolutionized radio and the American theatre in the 1930's before embarking on CITIZEN KANE and a fabulous film career. Also, to say that the cinema died in 1978 with R.W. Fassbinder is equally ludicrous. Greenaway's own fine career contradicts that notion. Two films Greenaway has admired are David Lynch's BLUE VELVET and Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR. Both date around 1986-87. Some of what Greenaway says is engaging and entertaining but there are passages that are sheer stupidity and pompous.
To me Orson Welle's visual sense is as colorful ,intelligent and various possibly superior even to that of Eisenstein. Eisensein 's movement and mise-en -scene are a bit limited when compares
Mr. Greenaway's line of thinking can be applied to every aspect of life. "Why do we sit in cars? Why do we put our feet in shoes? Why do we lie horizontally in bed?" It's all based on the assumption that cinema ought to be 'progressing' as painting had progressed for the last 600 years. I believe it's a false assumption.
Progression is a concept. It is often applied willy-nilly to various activities, institutions and etc. Anyway painting had progressed but also moved away from its first figurative moivations.Its best to say all human endeavors display activity or movement.The progress implies betterment: this does not happen in a straight line.There are many types of activity flowing from any discovery or medium historical ovement/activity in all the streams of evolution of activities that one can think about and assess .
Peter Greenaway was never comfortable with narrative film making. The more obscure his work became the faster his audience deserted him. What Greenaway talks about is really little more than video installation art that has been able to prosper through major developments in technology in recent years. It has it's place & that place is in the art gallery & not in the cinema.
Some of his work is brilliant. Favourites of mine are Draughtsman's Contract and Rembrandt's J'accuse. There are insights in his talks that are fascinating but there's also a post-modernist stench... a falsified sophistication. The egos and financial pressures that a film director has to deal with, a painter never experiences. All he needs is paint, brush and canvass. Also, for someone so knowledgeable about painting, to say that the peak of the art form has come in the last 150 years, is moronic. Jackson Pollock in the same league as the Italian, Dutch, Spanish and other masters of the Renaissance? I can do a Pollock or Warhol painting just by pissing on a canvass. What an articulate idiot he is. I've noticed that about certain alleged brilliant Englishmen the last few years. Dawkins is another one. They've become useful idiots for the current cultural climate.
Fresco paintings appeared in 1500 BC, about 3000 years before Giotto. Nor were they forgotten and then rediscovered. It was all a continuous tradition. Besides, the demise of fresco painting, due to the rise of much more comfortable and versatile oil painting, did not kill painting as such. So much for "3 generations" theory. It's nonsense. It's utter shameful nonsense.
I DON'T THINK THAT THAT ART PROGRESS IS A CONSTANT PROGRESS -- IT IS A FREE- NON SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL SELF EXPRESSION - TO ME THE CONSTANT APPROVAL OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS - THESE INDIVIDUAL WORKS BECOME CONSTANTLY POPULAR CLASSICS -- THE APPARENT LIKENESS OR PATTERN OF CLASSICS - IS SIMPLY THE FACT THAT INDIVIDUAL LIKES ARE CHOSEN BY INDIVIDUALS WITH HUMAN NATURE - THUS SIMILAR PERSONAL VALUES -------- TOM
I've been an admirer of Peter Greenaway since I first saw his DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT in the 1980's and I recently watched REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE. Both are very fine films. I'm looking forward to seeing his EISENSTEIN film. Trained as a painter, he is, without question, a visual connoisseur and a highly engaging, articulate personality.
While I relish the opportunity to view his work, his exploring one medium after another (painting, cinema, new media) doesn't mean the death of one of them.
Proclaiming the cinema to be dead is pompous. The novel may not be the main source of artistic consumption now as it was in the 19th century but novels are still being written, including fine ones and people are reading them. Painting is no longer on the level of the the Renaissance Masters but that's not the point, works of quality are still being made by contemporary artists.
Greenaway says the cinema died in 1983 because now we have different and newer gadgets to play with and we can control how we view it. It's like saying, painting is dead because we can buy a print of a work of art or even upload it to our mobile phone. Also, let me think of some of the films I've seen since 1983... Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR, Martin Scorsese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Gianni Amelio's OPEN DOORS, the late Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE, Terry Zwigoff's CRUMB, Gaspar Noe's I STAND ALONE, David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR., Paolo Sorrentino's THE GREAT BEAUTY and Greenaway's own work. Those are just a few examples that I picked out in a few seconds. I could go on and list more and more films by the same directors and others.
His post-modern, deconstructionist take on cinema is undeniably pleasurable at times but also irritating and short sighted. Irritating because his avalanche of sights, sounds and words do not always consolidate, as they did for Orson Welles, for example. Short sighted because the cinema is also an industry and as Welles himself reportedly once said, anyone who doesn't think money plays a part in it is a fool.
It's difficult enough for serious film-makers to get funding for their projects, they shouldn't be told that they need to abandon text (the script), stop directing actors, etc...
let alone that the medium is dead.
The cinema is the most incestuous art form there is. It has stolen from every other medium - literature, music, painting, theatre, you name it. That is its genius. There is no one way of doing film just as there is no one philosophy. There are only philosophers and film-makers.
Thanks just the same, Mr. Greenaway.
Greenaway is a genius, even when barking mad or often wrong
Thank you!!!!
As an amazing example of the most creative spirit of an Aries he is quite so...Aside from that he's wonderful, confrontational, and inspiring.
spirit of Aries? It is 2018, do people still actually believe such nonsense?
Should be linked at the right- Peter Greenaway: "Nine Classic Paintings Revisited"
"Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced". Peter Greenaway
Come on! It should be noted that September has 30 days.
That's the joke.
Is this music from one of his films? Anyone know how i could find it?
The conversations of the characters from wall to wall reminds me of a vision I've had of creating 3D characters who move around the space that the audience might interact with such that each person does not see or hear quite the same. There is a name for such 3D characters....but it escapes me...Oh Hologram...yes that might even be done so that a live performance might happen in several places and the performers could view all the different audiences too.
Why sit in the dark with a bunch of strangers and share your emotions? Well... some people actually LIKE communal activities. Being in a group makes me feel more human.
but a zed & two naugts is a masterpiece.
Yes there is image-based cinema. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh and Sergei Parajanov's 3 movies (The Color of Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress, Ashik Kerib). Maybe others too. Their movies might have started wiuth a script, but the script is just an excuse, or else a thin threadwork that holds together a wealth of imagery.
Actually image based cinema started way before Paradjanov .Try the American female Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage (they're just the famous ones I would have to do a little research to find what was happenig all over he world maybe even before them.in the 1940's with Maya Deren .. Everyone know this .I'm sure they were not he first .Melies and Franjus ere basically image based but there was a beginning and end which is narrative even when the end comes first or any of the various forms of non-linear cinema and what else was silent cinema when there was no dialogue also some of he first interests erewatching recreated painting tableauux live. This was a form of theatre -intertainment in the 19th century. Go back to your textbooks or notes from our classes .Im just remembering from my rabid chasing of film -history and entertainment of all forms
He's British. It can't be helped. Speaking from experience.
the download link is broken!
He talks a good concept but his best works all rely on narrative to hang his lovely, dense info-packed pictures on otherwise why would anyone spend 2 hours looking at a moving screen.
”is the first of two lectures” - which and where is the other one?
Full immersion VR cinema may be the solution?
There are several pioneers of video art, and a whole army of their successors. If Greenaway has finally discovered the video installation medium, good for him, but it doesn't make him eligible to play a prophet on cinema's destiny. Perhaps he is right in his "notions", but he missed the whole 500 years - he should have preached this at that time in camera obscura rooms, since he hasn't moved from the renaissance fascination. But, all this is rather about survival of the artist's ego, much more than a real concern about the path of the cinema, let alone the 2 mil € Nokia bull - the info he was so eager to share in "BTW" fashion.
Present tense non-narrative cinema. But what are the politics of such a medium? I don't understand how Greenaway's political commitments are harmonized with these ideas. Maybe they move in tandem, I just don't get it.
I just watched this again and found it much less articulate, to say the least. I'd say outright stupid at times. There's a lot of things that Americans can and should be criticized on but to deny them one of their brightest sons is ludicrous. Orson Welles was American.
Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Sure, he travelled with his father abroad to Europe and Asia and his first real theatrical experience was at the Gate Theatre in Dublin but he was a boy from the American Midwest. He revolutionized radio and the American theatre in the 1930's before embarking on CITIZEN KANE and a fabulous film career.
Also, to say that the cinema died in 1978 with R.W. Fassbinder is equally ludicrous. Greenaway's own fine career contradicts that notion.
Two films Greenaway has admired are David Lynch's BLUE VELVET and Bernardo Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR. Both date around 1986-87. Some of what Greenaway says is engaging and entertaining but there are passages that are sheer stupidity and pompous.
To me Orson Welle's visual sense is as colorful ,intelligent and various possibly superior even to that of Eisenstein. Eisensein 's movement and mise-en -scene are a bit limited when compares
7:33 So true
Good.
Mr. Greenaway's line of thinking can be applied to every aspect of life. "Why do we sit in cars? Why do we put our feet in shoes? Why do we lie horizontally in bed?" It's all based on the assumption that cinema ought to be 'progressing' as painting had progressed for the last 600 years.
I believe it's a false assumption.
Progression is a concept. It is often applied willy-nilly to various activities, institutions and etc. Anyway painting had progressed but also moved away from its first figurative moivations.Its best to say all human endeavors display activity or movement.The progress implies betterment: this does not happen in a straight line.There are many types of activity flowing from any discovery or medium historical ovement/activity in all the streams of evolution of activities that one can think about and assess .
Peter Greenaway was never comfortable with narrative film making. The more obscure his work became the faster his audience deserted him. What Greenaway talks about is really little more than video installation art that has been able to prosper through major developments in technology in recent years. It has it's place & that place is in the art gallery & not in the cinema.
Most ridiculous and pretentious thing I’ve ever read.
41:10
Some of his work is brilliant. Favourites of mine are Draughtsman's Contract and Rembrandt's J'accuse. There are insights in his talks that are fascinating but there's also a post-modernist stench... a falsified sophistication. The egos and financial pressures that a film director has to deal with, a painter never experiences. All he needs is paint, brush and canvass. Also, for someone so knowledgeable about painting, to say that the peak of the art form has come in the last 150 years, is moronic. Jackson Pollock in the same league as the Italian, Dutch, Spanish and other masters of the Renaissance? I can do a Pollock or Warhol painting just by pissing on a canvass. What an articulate idiot he is. I've noticed that about certain alleged brilliant Englishmen the last few years. Dawkins is another one. They've become useful idiots for the current cultural climate.
Fresco paintings appeared in 1500 BC, about 3000 years before Giotto. Nor were they forgotten and then rediscovered. It was all a continuous tradition.
Besides, the demise of fresco painting, due to the rise of much more comfortable and versatile oil painting, did not kill painting as such.
So much for "3 generations" theory. It's nonsense. It's utter shameful nonsense.
Peter Greenaway probably loves Sleep No More
I DON'T THINK THAT THAT ART PROGRESS IS A CONSTANT PROGRESS -- IT IS A FREE- NON SYSTEM OF INDIVIDUAL SELF EXPRESSION - TO ME THE CONSTANT APPROVAL OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS - THESE INDIVIDUAL WORKS BECOME CONSTANTLY POPULAR CLASSICS -- THE APPARENT LIKENESS OR PATTERN OF CLASSICS - IS SIMPLY THE FACT THAT INDIVIDUAL LIKES ARE CHOSEN BY INDIVIDUALS WITH HUMAN NATURE - THUS SIMILAR PERSONAL VALUES -------- TOM