Editing Peter Greenaway

{{Short description|British film director}}
{{distinguish|Peter Van Greenaway}}
{{BLP sources|date=May 2024}}
{{Use British English|date=January 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_suffix   = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CBE}}
| name               = Peter Greenaway
| image              = Peter greenaway.jpg
| alt                = 
| caption            = Greenaway in 2007
| birth_name         = 
| birth_date         = {{birth date and age|1942|04|05|df=yes}}
| birth_place        = [[Newport, Wales|Newport]], [[Monmouthshire]], Wales
| death_date         = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} (death date then birth date) -->
| death_place        = 
| other_names        = 
| occupation         = [[Film director]], [[screenwriter]], [[visual artist]]
| years_active       = 1962–present
| notable_works      = ''[[The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover]]'' (1989)
| children           = 
}}

'''Peter Greenaway''', {{post-nominals|country=GBR|commas=on|CBE}} (born 5 April 1942<ref>{{cite book|title=501 Movie Directors|editor-first=Steven Jay|editor-last=Schneider|publisher=Cassell Illustrated|location=London|year=2007|page=458|isbn=9781844035731|oclc=1347156402}}</ref>) is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of [[Renaissance painting|Renaissance]] and [[Baroque painting|Baroque]] painting, and [[Mannerism|Mannerist painting]] in particular. Common traits in his films are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

==Early life==
Greenaway was born in [[Newport, Wales|Newport]], [[Monmouthshire (historic)|Monmouthshire]], Wales,<ref>{{cite web |last=Abbott |first=Spencer H. |title=Interview with Peter Greenaway |date=6 June 1997 |url=http://users.skynet.be/chrisrenson-makemovies/Greenaw3.htm |url-status=dead |access-date=15 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080226140343/http://users.skynet.be/chrisrenson-makemovies/Greenaw3.htm |archive-date=26 February 2008}}</ref> to a teacher mother and a builder's merchant father.<ref name=ec>{{cite web |title=Peter Greenaway Biography (1942–) |url=http://www.filmreference.com/film/85/Peter-Greenaway.html |publisher=Filmreference.Com |year=2011 |access-date=12 January 2011}}</ref> Greenaway's family had relocated to Wales prior to his birth to escape [[the Blitz]]. They returned to the London area at the end of [[World War II]] and settled in [[Woodford, London|Woodford]], then part of [[Essex]]. He attended Churchfields Junior School <ref>{{cite web |last=Cogger |first=Freddie |title=Interview with the Head Teacher |date=5 February 2024 |url=https://churchfieldsjunior.com/interview-with-the-head-teacher/ |access-date=7 March 2025 }}</ref> and later [[Forest School, Walthamstow|Forest School]] in nearby [[Walthamstow]].<ref>[https://www.bafta.org/media-centre/transcripts/bafta-a-life-in-pictures-peter-greenaway BAFTA A Life in Pictures: Peter Greenaway]: an interview with Ian Haydn Smith for the ''British Academy Film Awards'', 16 April 2014. [Retrieved 20 May 2024]</ref>

At an early age Greenaway decided on becoming a painter. He became interested in European cinema, focusing first on the films of [[Ingmar Bergman]], and then on the French ''[[nouvelle vague]]'' filmmakers such as [[Jean-Luc Godard]] and, most especially, [[Alain Resnais]]. Greenaway has said that Resnais's ''[[Last Year in Marienbad]]'' (1961) had been the most important influence upon his own filmmaking (and he himself established a close working relationship with that film's cinematographer [[Sacha Vierny]]).<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/3618933/Film-makers-on-film-Peter-Greenaway.html Film-makers on film: Peter Greenaway]: an interview with John Whitley in ''The Daily Telegraph'', 14 June 2004. [Retrieved 27 February 2022]</ref> He now lives in [[Amsterdam]].<ref>[https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway In the beginning was the image: an interview with Peter Greenaway]: an interview with Lillian Crawford for the ''British Film Institute'', 17 November 2022. [Retrieved 20 May 2024]</ref>

==Career==

===1962–1999===
[[File:Greenaway 01.jpg|thumbnail|upright|Greenaway at the [[44th Venice International Film Festival|44th Venice Film Festival]] (1987)]]
In 1962, Greenaway began studies at [[Walthamstow College of Art]], where a fellow student was musician [[Ian Dury]] (later cast in ''[[The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover]]''). Greenaway trained as a muralist for three years; he made his first film, ''Death of Sentiment'', a churchyard furniture essay filmed in four large London cemeteries. In 1965, he joined the [[Central Office of Information]] (COI), where he went on to work for fifteen years as a film editor and director. In that time he made a series of experimental films, starting with ''Train'' (1966), footage of the last steam trains at [[London Waterloo railway station|Waterloo station]] (situated behind the COI), edited to a ''[[musique concrète]]'' composition. ''Tree'' (1966) is a homage to the embattled tree growing in concrete outside the [[Royal Festival Hall]] on the [[South Bank]] in London. In the late 1970s, he made ''[[Vertical Features Remake]]'' and ''A Walk Through H''.<ref>[http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/493641/index.html Walk Through H, A (1978)] ''BFI Screenonline''</ref> The former is an examination of various arithmetical editing structures, and the latter is a journey through the maps of a fictitious country.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

In 1980, Greenaway delivered ''[[The Falls (1980 film)|The Falls]]'' (his first feature-length film) – a mammoth, fantastical, absurdist encyclopaedia of flight-associated material all relating to ninety-two victims of what is referred to as the Violent Unknown Event (VUE). In the 1980s his cinema flowered in his best-known films, ''[[The Draughtsman's Contract]]'' (1982), ''[[A Zed & Two Noughts]]'' (1985), ''[[The Belly of an Architect]]'' (1987), ''[[Drowning by Numbers]]'' (1988), and his most successful film, ''[[The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover]]'' (1989). Greenaway's most familiar musical collaborator during this period is composer [[Michael Nyman]], who has scored several films.<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/close-your-eyes-and-listen-michael-nyman-has-a-problem-and-it-s-nothing-to-do-with-turning-50-it-s-peter-greenaway-and-all-those-movies-by-mark-pappenheim-1464663.html Close your eyes and listen: Michael Nyman has a problem, and it's nothing to do with turning 50. It's Peter Greenaway and all those movies.]: interview with Michael Nyman by Mark Pappenheim ''The Independent'', 1 December 1993.</ref>

In 1989, Greenaway collaborated with artist [[Tom Phillips (artist)|Tom Phillips]] on a television serial ''[[A TV Dante]]'', dramatising the first few cantos of [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[The Divine Comedy|Inferno]]''. In the 1990s he presented ''[[Prospero's Books]]'' (1991), the controversial ''[[The Baby of Mâcon]]'' (1993), ''[[The Pillow Book (film)|The Pillow Book]]'' (1996), and ''[[8½ Women]]'' (1999).{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

In the early 1990s Greenaway wrote ten opera [[libretti]] known as the ''[[Death of a Composer]]'' series, dealing with the commonalities of the deaths of ten composers from [[Anton Webern]] to [[John Lennon]]; however, the other composers are fictitious, and one is a character from ''The Falls''. In 1995, [[Louis Andriessen]] completed the sixth libretto, ''[[Rosa – A Horse Drama]]''. He is currently professor of cinema studies at the [[European Graduate School]] in [[Saas-Fee]], Switzerland.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200925072818/https://egs.edu/biography/peter-greenaway/  Peter Greenaway: Professor of Film at The European Graduate School ]. Retrieved 20 May 2024.</ref>

===2000–present===
Greenaway presented the ambitious ''[[The Tulse Luper Suitcases]]'', a multimedia project that resulted in three films, a website, two books, a touring exhibition, and a shorter feature which reworked the material of the first three films.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

He also contributed to ''[[Visions of Europe (film)|Visions of Europe]]'', a short film collection by different European Union directors; his British entry is ''[[The European Showerbath]]''. ''[[Nightwatching]]'' and ''[[Rembrandt's J'Accuse]]'' are two films on [[Rembrandt van Rijn|Rembrandt]], released respectively in 2007 and 2008. ''Nightwatching'' is the first feature in the series "Dutch Masters", with the second project titled as ''[[Goltzius and the Pelican Company]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Morgan |first=Nesta |title=nightwatching |journal=[[Film&festivals]] |volume=2 |issue=2 |page=5 |publisher=Wallflower Press / Film Culture Ltd. |location=United Kingdom |issn=1755-5485}}</ref>

On 17 June 2005, Greenaway appeared for his first [[VJing|VJ]] performance during an art club evening in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with music by DJ Serge Dodwell (aka Radar), as a backdrop, 'VJ' Greenaway used for his set a special system consisting of a large plasma screen with laser controlled touchscreen to project the ninety-two ''Tulse Luper'' stories on the twelve screens of "Club 11", mixing the images live. This was later reprised at the Optronica festival, London.{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

On 12 October 2007, he created the multimedia installation ''[[Peopling the Palaces at Venaria Reale]]'' at the [[Royal Palace of Venaria]], which animated the Palace with 100 videoprojectors.<ref>{{cite web |title=Peopling The Palaces at Venaria Reale – Enciclopedia del cinema in Piemonte |url=http://www.cinemainpiemonte.it/enciclopedia/schedafilm.php?film_id=1198&stile=small&PHPSESSID=478d8627f581cc06656409acbc362ca1 |access-date=12 February 2011}} {{dead link|date=January 2017}}</ref>

Greenaway was interviewed for Clive Meyer's ''Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice'' (2011), and voiced strong criticisms of film theory as distinct from discussions of other media: "Are you sufficiently happy with cinema as a thinking medium if you are only talking to one person?"<ref>{{citation |last=Laurie |first=Timothy |title=Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice |url=https://www.academia.edu/2763909 |journal=Media International Australia |volume=147 |page=171 |year=2013|doi=10.1177/1329878X1314700134 |s2cid=149797284 }}</ref>

On 3 May 2016, he received a Honoris Causa doctorate from the University of San Martín, Argentina.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2016/04/27/peter-greenaway-llega-a-la-unsam/ |title=Peter Greenaway llega a la UNSAM » Noticias UNSAM<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=9 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110085646/http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2016/04/27/peter-greenaway-llega-a-la-unsam/ |archive-date=10 January 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

===''Nine Classical Paintings Revisited''===
In 2006, Greenaway began a series of digital [[video installation]]s, ''Nine Classical Paintings Revisited'', with his exploration of [[Rembrandt]]'s ''[[Night Watch (painting)|Night Watch]]'' in the [[Rijksmuseum]] in Amsterdam. On 30 June 2008, after much negotiation, Greenaway staged a one-night performance 'remixing' [[Leonardo da Vinci|da Vinci]]'s ''[[The Last Supper (Leonardo)|The Last Supper]]'' in the [[refectory]] of [[Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan)|Santa Maria delle Grazie]]<ref>[http://www.petergreenaway.info/content/view/130/1/ "Leonardo's Last Supper"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090221095515/http://www.petergreenaway.info/content/view/130/1/ |date=21 February 2009}}, Peter Greenaway's official site.</ref> in Milan to a select audience of dignitaries. The performance consisted of superimposing digital imagery and projections onto the painting with music from the composer [[Marco Robino]].{{citation needed|date=May 2024}}

<gallery mode="packed">
File:La ronda de noche, por Rembrandt van Rijn.jpg|''[[Night Watch (painting)|Night Watch]]'' by [[Rembrandt]]
File:Paolo Veronese 008.jpg|''[[The Wedding at Cana (Veronese)|The Wedding at Cana]]'' by [[Paolo Veronese]] (mid-16th century)
</gallery>

Greenaway exhibited his digital exploration of ''[[The Wedding at Cana (Veronese)|The Wedding at Cana]]'' by [[Paolo Veronese]] as part of the 2009 [[Venice Biennial]]. An arts writer for ''[[The New York Times]]'' called it "possibly the best unmanned art history lecture you'll ever experience," while acknowledging that some viewers might respond to it as "mediocre art, [[Disneyfication|Disneyfied]] [[kitsch]] or a flamboyant denigration of [[Site-specific art|site-specific]] video installation." The 50-minute presentation, set to a soundtrack, incorporates closeup images of faces from the painting along with animated diagrams revealing compositional relations among the figures. These images are projected onto and around the replica of the painting that now stands at the original site, within the [[Palladian architecture]] of the [[Benedictine]] refectory on [[San Giorgio Maggiore]]. The soundtrack features music and imagined dialogue scripted by Greenaway for the 126 "wedding guests, servants, onlookers and wedding crashers" depicted in the painting, consisting of [[small talk]] and banal chatter that culminates in reaction to the [[Marriage at Cana|miraculous transformation of water to wine]], according to the [[Gospels]] the [[Miracles attributed to Jesus|first miracle performed]] by Jesus. [[Picasso]]'s ''[[Guernica (painting)|Guernica]]'', [[Georges-Pierre Seurat|Seurat]]'s ''[[A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte|Grande Jatte]]'', works by [[Jackson Pollock]] and [[Claude Monet]], [[Diego Velázquez|Velázquez]]'s ''[[Las Meninas]]'' and [[Michelangelo]]'s ''[[The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)|The Last Judgment]]'' are possible series subjects.<ref>Roberta Smith, "In Venice, Peter Greenaway Takes Veronese's Figures Out to Play", ''The New York Times'' 21 June 2009 [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/arts/design/22greenaway.html?em online.]</ref>

==Films==
===Features===
{{BLP unreferenced section|date=May 2024}}
*''[[The Falls (1980 film)|The Falls]]'' (1980)
*''[[The Draughtsman's Contract]]'' (1982)
*''[[A Zed & Two Noughts]]'' (1985)
*''[[The Belly of an Architect]]'' (1987)
*''[[Drowning by Numbers]]'' (1988)
*''[[The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover]]'' (1989)
*''[[Prospero's Books]]'' (1991)
*''[[The Baby of Mâcon]]'' (1993)
*''[[The Pillow Book (film)|The Pillow Book]]'' (1996)
*''[[8½ Women]]'' (1999)
*''[[The Tulse Luper Suitcases|The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story]]'' (2003)
*''[[The Tulse Luper Suitcases|The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea]]'' (2004)
*''[[The Tulse Luper Suitcases|The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish]]'' (2004)
*''[[A Life in Suitcases]]'' (edited version of The Tulse Luper Suitcases series) (2005)<ref>{{cite web|title=TULSE LUPER 'A LIFE IN SUITCASES' BY PETER GREENAWAY|publisher=Luperpedia Foundation|year=2011|url=http://www.luperpediafoundation.com/tulse-luper-a-life-in-suitcases|access-date=8 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160213123513/http://www.luperpediafoundation.com/tulse-luper-a-life-in-suitcases|archive-date=13 February 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>
*''[[Nightwatching]]'' (2007)
*''[[Goltzius and the Pelican Company]]'' (2012)
*''[[Eisenstein in Guanajuato]]'' (2015)
* ''[[Walking to Paris]]'' (2023)
* ''[[Tower Stories]]'' (upcoming)

===Shorts===
*''Death of Sentiment'' (1962)
*''Tree'' (1966)
*''Train'' (1966)
*''Revolution'' (1967)
*''5 Postcards from Capital Cities'' (1967)
*''Intervals'' (1969)
*''Erosion'' (1971)
*''H Is for House'' (1973)
*''Windows'' (1975)
*''Water Wrackets'' (1975)
*''Water'' (1975)
*''Goole by Numbers'' (1976)
*''Dear Phone'' (1978)
*''[[Vertical Features Remake]]'' (1978)
*''A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist'' (1978)
*''1–100'' (1978)
*''Making a Splash'' (1984)
*''Inside Rooms: 26 Bathrooms, London & Oxfordshire'' (1985)
*''Hubert Bals Handshake'' (1989)
*''Rosa: La monnaie de munt'' (1992)<ref name="LF">{{cite web|title=Peter Greenaway|publisher=Luperpedia Foundation|year=2011|url=http://www.luperpediafoundation.com/peter-greenaway|access-date=8 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160129105151/http://www.luperpediafoundation.com/peter-greenaway/|archive-date=29 January 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>
*''Peter Greenaway'' (1995) <small>- segment of ''[[Lumière and Company]]''</small>
*''The Bridge Celebration'' (1997)<ref name="LF" />
*''The Man in the Bath'' (2001)
*''European Showerbath'' (2004) <small>- segment of ''[[Visions of Europe (film)|Visions of Europe]]''</small>
*''[[Castle Amerongen (film)|Castle Amerongen]]'' (2011)
*''Just in Time'' (2013) <small>- segment of ''3x3D''</small><ref name="LF" /><ref>{{cite web|title=3x3D|publisher=imdb |year=2013|url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2693702/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_4 | access-date = 8 February 2016}}</ref>

===Documentaries and mockumentaries===
*''Eddie Kid'' (1978)
*''Cut Above the Rest'' (1978)
*''Zandra Rhodes'' (1979)
*''Women Artists'' (1979)
*''Leeds Castle'' (1979)
*''Lacock Village'' (1980)
*''Country Diary'' (1980)
*''Terence Conran'' (1981)
*''Four American Composers'' (1983)
*''[[The Coastline]] (also known as The Sea in their Blood)'' (1983)<ref name="LF" /><ref>{{cite web|title=The Sea in Their Blood (1983)|publisher=imdb|year=2016|url = https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243542/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_42| access-date = 8 February 2016}}</ref>
*''Fear of Drowning'' (1988)
*''The Reitdiep Journeys'' (2001)<ref name="LF" />
*''[[Rembrandt's J'Accuse]]'' (2008)
*''The Marriage'' (2009)<ref name="LF" />
*''Atomic Bombs on the Planet Earth'' (2011)<ref name="LF" />
*''Luther and His Legacy'' (2017)

===Television===
*''Act of God'' (1980)<ref name="act_of_god">{{cite web|last1=Greenaway|first1=Peter|title=Act of God|url=http://petergreenaway.org.uk/actofgod.htm|access-date=8 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160119011504/http://petergreenaway.org.uk/actofgod.htm|archive-date=19 January 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Aitken|first1=Ian|title=Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film 3-Volume Set|date=18 October 2013 |isbn=9781135206208|pages=2–3|publisher=Routledge |ref=act_of_god_encyclopedia}}</ref>
*''Death in the Seine'' (French TV, 1988)
*''[[A TV Dante]]'' (mini-series, 1989)
*''M Is for Man, Music, Mozart'' (1991)
*''A Walk Through Prospero's Library'' (1992)
*''Darwin'' (French TV, 1993)
*''The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama'' (1999)

==Exhibitions==
*''The Physical Self'', Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1991)<ref name="PhysSelf">{{cite book|last1=Greenaway|first1=Peter|title=The physical self : a selection by Peter Greenaway from the collections of the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam = De keuze van Peter Greenaway uit de collecties van Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 27/10/91-12/1/92|date=1991|publisher=Het Museum|location=Rotterdam|isbn=90-6918-088-X}}</ref> 
* ''Le bruit des nuages'' (as curator), Louvre Museum, Paris (1992)
*''100 Objects to represent the World'' (1992) at the [[Academy of Fine Arts Vienna]] and the [[Hofburg Imperial Palace]] Vienna.
*''[[Stairs 1 Geneva]]'' (1995)
*''Flyga över vatten/Flying over water'', Malmö Konsthall (16/9 2000 – 14/1 2001)
* ''Peopling the Palaces at Venaria Reale'', [[Palace of Venaria]] (2007)
* ''Heavy Water'', Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv (2011)
* ''Sex & The Sea'', Maritiem Museum, Rotterdam (2013)
* ''The Towers/Lucca Hubris'', Lucca (2013)

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* {{Official website}}
* {{IMDb name|425|Peter Greenaway}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20091220084927/https://www.egs.edu/faculty/peter-greenaway/biography/ Peter Greenaway.] Faculty website at [[European Graduate School]] (Biography, filmography, articles and photos)
* {{Screenonline name|id=460978|name=Peter Greenaway biography and credits}}
* Manu Luksch. [https://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6112/1.html Interview – The Medium is the Message.] Telepolis. 13 February 1997
* Chris Gordon. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130627193814/https://www.sptimes.ru/story/35824 Interview – An eye for optical theory], The St. Petersburg Times, Russia. 21 June 2012
{{Peter Greenaway}}
{{IFFI Award for Best Director|state=collapsed}}
{{BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenaway, Peter}}
[[Category:Peter Greenaway| ]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award]]
[[Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:English experimental filmmakers]]
[[Category:English film directors]]
[[Category:20th-century English painters]]
[[Category:English male painters]]
[[Category:21st-century English painters]]
[[Category:21st-century British male artists]]
[[Category:English screenwriters]]
[[Category:English male screenwriters]]
[[Category:Golden Calf winners]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People educated at Forest School, Walthamstow]]
[[Category:People from Newport, Wales]]
[[Category:Alumni of Walthamstow College of Art]]
[[Category:20th-century Welsh screenwriters]]
[[Category:Postmodernist filmmakers]]
[[Category:20th-century Welsh male writers]]