Peter Greenaway

Born: 1942-04-05

Peter Greenaway, CBE (born 5 April 1942) is a Welsh writer-director, painter, and video artist based in Amsterdam. Throughout the late 1960s and '70s, he produced several experimental documentary/mockumentary shorts while working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information. This early period culminated in "The Falls" (1980), a three-hour mockumentary indexing the strange effects of the VUE (the Violent Unknown Event) on 92 people whose names begin with the letters F-A-L-L. He made his dramatic feature film debut with "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982), and throughout the 1980s directed a string of critically acclaimed and frequently controversial films: "A Zed & Two Noughts" (1985), "The Belly of an Architect" (1987), "Drowning by Numbers" (1988), and his best-known work, the vicious Thatcher-era satire "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (1989). In the 1990s, he directed the Shakespeare adaptation "Prospero's Books" (1991), controversial religious satire "The Baby of Mâcon" (1993), erotic drama "The Pillow Book" (1996), and "8½ Women" (1999), an homage to the films of Federico Fellini, a major influence on Greenaway. In the early 2000s, Greenaway embarked on the ambitious "Tulse Luper" project, a multimedia body of historical fiction revolving around the life of the eponymous fictional hero. In addition to novels, CD-ROMs, online material, and a touring exhibition, the project spawned a trilogy of feature films: "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story" (2003), "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea" (2004), and "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish" (2004). The trilogy was followed by a fourth feature, "A Life in Suitcases" (2005), which abridges the Tulse Luper saga into a single film. Since the mid 2000s, Greenaway's film work has focused on idiosyncratic, heavily fictionalised biopics dedicated to some of his favourite artists: Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn in "Nightwatching" (2007), Dutch Baroque engraver Hendrik Goltzius in "Goltzius and the Pelican Company" (2012), Soviet Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in "Eisenstein in Guanajuato" (2015), and Romanian-French sculptor Constantin Brâncuși in "Walking to Paris" (TBD). Greenaway has lived and worked in Amsterdam since the mid 1990s. He is married to artist Saskia Boddeke, with whom he has two children. He also has two children from a previous marriage to potter Carol Greenaway.


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The Falls

as Interviewer
Released: 1980-11-19

The exploration of the effects of an unexpected catastrophe, known as VUE (violent unknown...

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8 ½ Women

as (uncredited)
Released: 1999-05-22

Following the death of a mother, a father and son open up their very own harem in their Genevan...

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The Wedding at Cana

as Some characters (uncredited)
Released: 2009-01-01

A short film by Peter Greenaway. It depicts the painting The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo...

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Rembrandt's J'Accuse...!

as Himself / Public Prosecutor
Released: 2008-10-04

J'accuse is an 'essay-istic' documentary in which Greenaway's fierce criticism of today's visual...

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Tintoretto: A Rebel in Venice

as Self
Released: 2019-02-25

Five hundred years after his birth, the life and career of the Italian Renaissance's last great...

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Dear Phone

as Narrator
Released: 1976-01-01

A narrator relates a variety of peculiar stories involving characters with the initials HC and...

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Windows

as Narrator
Released: 1975-01-01

A sort of documentary on the people known to have fallen out of windows in a certain time frame...

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H Is for House

as (voice)
Released: 1973-01-01

Ostensibly, a film about a child's pictorial alphabet stuck on the letter H.

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Cinema16: British Short Films

as Self - Commentary, Dear Phone (voice)
Released: 2003-05-05

This critically acclaimed DVD contains 16 of the best classic and award winning British short...

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Fear of Drowning

as Himself
Released: 1989-02-07

Peter Greenaway presents this "Commentary in one hundred parts" on Drowning by Numbers (1987),...

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The Greenaway Alphabet

as Peter Greenaway
Released: 2018-10-05

The fascinations of filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose motto is "art is life and life is art,"are...

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The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch

as uncredited
Released: 2016-12-30

Exhibition on Screen's latest release celebrates the life and masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch...

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The 92 Faces of Peter Greenaway

as Himself
Released: 2002-01-01

Peter Greenaway discussing a variety of topics, with each segment ranging in length from 6s to...

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Peter Greenaway: A Documentary

as Himself
Released: 1992-08-14

Searching for the roots of Peter Greenaway in his films, this artful documentary begins with a...

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The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama

as Narrator
Released: 1999-09-04

"Rosa", with a libretto by Peter Greenaway and score by Louis Andriessen, is the first in a...

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The Missing Nail

as (voice)
Released: 2019-12-01

A short ironic film about a Missing Nail in the iconography of Christ and his depiction in da...

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Kulturplatz

as Self
First aired: 2004-09-01

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