| |
see
also |
|
 |
| |
Cambridge
Film Festival
Check out the who, the why and the what...
Audio
interviews with Peter Greenaway
Hear the man in his own words...
|
|
|
| |
internet
links |
|
|
| |
The
Tulse Luper Suitcases
Go to this site. We can't tell you anymore...
Greenaway
Art-work, exhibitions and more...
Greenaway
The man and his mind...
More on Greenaway
Born, bred and biog stuff...
The BBC is not responsible for the content
of external websites.
|
|
|
| |
facts |
|
|
| |
Sitting
in B bar in Cambridge we challenged Peter on the extreme audience
reactions to his work from love, to hate to (alleged) suicide.
"Well, we have a man sitting out on the verandah here
called Mr Cox who said I was the 'worst film maker in the
world'". [Smile]
Director
Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Revengers Tragedy...)
delivered a keynote address at The Cambridge Film Festival
looking at current film policy in the UK!
Other film credits for Peter Greenaway include:
A Zed and Two Noughts The Belly of an Architect
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover
Prospero's Books
The Baby of Macon
8/12 women
Daddy's Girl
Drowning by Numbers The Draughtman's Contract
Despite
the enormity of the project, despite heading up a production
crew the size of a small country and despite the often violent
reaction to his work Peter confided that he does sleep well
at night. Very well!
|
|
|
| |
print
this page |
|
|
| |
View
a printable
version of this page |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
"...it's
a social and political manifesto about the future of cinema."
|
|
Greenaway
on Tulse Luper
|
|
The
Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 1: The Moab Story marks a new phase
in film artist, Greenaway's prolific life. The first of a
magnificently large-scale multi-media project encompassing
film, television, books, a play, the internet and an eventual
collection of 92 DVDs, each filled with the contents of one
of the suitcases that adventurer Tulse Luper (JJ Field) packs
on his travels.
LUPER explodes with multiple possibilities, the screen divided
into squares, the soundtrack fragmented with competing commentaries,
other films and casts (through audition clips), mixed into
these busy frames. It's a whirlwind ride that confounds, stupefies,
astounds and is way beyond the usual tools you call on to
decode a film.
|
You're here in Cambridge for the UK premiere of The Tulse Luper
Suitcases - can you tell us all about it?
Well I think, without wishing to be blasphemous to those people who
are still nostalgic about European arts cinema, in a way, the film's
only an excuse to promote the website.
 |
| Deborah
Harry features in The
Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 1: The Moab Story |
Now that
does sound heretical, because, up until now, the ancillaries were
always regarded to support the feature, but I hold some pretty blasphemous
ideas about the notion of cinema anyway, because I sincerely believe
that cinema is dead. It's not really a radical experimental area for
activity anymore. To paraphrase the old French notion about royalty,
the cinema is dead, long live the cinema.
So, I think that it's imperative that film makers, film practitioners,
film journalists, should really seriously grab the nettle and find
new ways to reinvent this extraordinary medium that once upon a time
used to be called cinema. The technological revolutions are pretty
obvious. Celluloid cinema is essentially dead, no self respecting
film maker really films on celluloid anymore.
There are new audiences, certainly there are audiences related to,
I suppose 14-30, who have essentially grown up with a computer, that
strange marriage of a typewriter and a television screen. Which means
interactivity, which means choice, which means not going to those
strange architectural places like this [Arts Picturehouse] called
cinemas anymore, so these places are entirely redundant.
|
"I'm
against illusionistic cinema; the notion of a window on the
world, and I regard cinema as being an incredible artificial
phenomenon, and not a form of escapism..."
|
|
Greenaway
on cinema
|
So there are many, many, many, many political and social things we
have to do, but we also, of course, have to make product for it and
I'm beginning to want to make a multi media project, which isn't just
related to cinema screens, but I suggest that films really are an
investment for everything else. I don't want to give up the old audiences,
that would be stupid. But I need to make an embrace to those who have
grown up essentially with a lap top. Circumstances, audiences, attitudes,
perspectives have moved on and if we really want the notion of the
moving image to live, then we've got to move with it too.
This project is not just a series of films, I hope it will be deeply
fascinating and intriguing. And hopefully profound as well. But
it's also a manifesto, it's a social and political manifesto about
the future of cinema.
Tulse
Luper, the main guy in your movie, is your alter-ego?
When
I was about 14 or 15, I'd have been far too shy to talk to you through
a microphone in a situation like this. And so I think, maybe of children
much younger, in order to express yourself, you would invent some
alter ego. Somebody who has a license like a Court Jester to say things
that you never dare to say in public yourself.
Well, I've learnt now how to conduct myself in public, so things are
a little better. But I still like this particular concept and idea
because I think that all culture probably does this is some strange
way. If you go back to the most simplistic version of it, when you
were a small child at the breakfast table and you knock over the milk
and you'd say 'oh I didn't do it, my friend did it'. And if the parents
are very wise, they enter into the conspiracy too, because that's
how things get done. There was also a way that Tulse Luper peopled
a lot of my early films. Along with his mistress's and his wife's
and his associates and his academic enemies. So I have resurrected
them all, plus a lot more, in order to revitalize a personal mythology
and hopefully make it an entertaining public mythology.
What's your next project? Where could you possibly go from here?
Well, we've just finished film one, it's being premiered, I suppose
in about five screens in Festivals all over Europe - we started with
Cannes and we've just come back from Moscow.
It hasn't yet been seen by a so-called distribution public audience,
I think that happens all over Europe in September and October. We've
shot most of the second film and we're now editing it. We're about
to shoot a lot of the third film, and maybe more.
We are a huge co-production organization which involves Hungary, Russia,
Spain and Italy, the Benelux countries and Japan. There are going
to be versions of the film for all these different countries, because
if you've seen the film you'll know that it's about language and it's
about text and it's about what is narrative and how does everybody
perceive the notions of different sorts of narrative.
One of the main metaphors of the production is that there's no such
thing as history, there's only historians. So I want to be able to
tell you my story many, many different ways. And there are, in the
very least, 92 stories in every accordance in every event. So you
can image 92 X 92 becomes one of the methodologies that we need to
be able to work with.
And again if you have seen the film, you will know that there are
92 suitcases. Every suitcase contains 92 ideas or objects which or
phenomenon. Philip Glass is already working on an opera based upon
the contents of suitcase 32, we have a Tokyo soap television series
on the contents of suitcase 49, and we've just had a play on in Frankfurt
about the contents of suitcase 46...so every single suitcase itself
will spawn another project...
And
with that, the man who stirs passions so deep they hurt, was
off. Charming, elegant and profound, Peter Greenaway delivered
his doctrine on the future of film with wile, wit and a
wicked grin... |
|
