Peter Greenaway

[Faux Hulot]

Greenaway announces the death of cinema - and blames the remote-control zapper

By Clifford Coonan in Pusan, South Korea
The Independent

He has been among the most exciting arthouse film-makers of his generation. But the British film director Peter Greenaway caused a stir at Korea's Pusan film festival yesterday by launching an attack on modern cinema and claiming the medium's days are numbered.

"If you shoot a dinosaur in the brain on Monday, it's tail is still waggling on Friday. Cinema is brain dead," said Greenaway, who has shocked and delighted audiences, often simultaneously, with movies such as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Prospero's Books.

"Cinema's death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art," he told a director's masterclass.

It should be noted that September has 30 days.

Known for his uncompromising views of art, the universe and everything in between, Greenaway said that new film-makers should look instead at new, interactive forms. He was in Pusan to promote his film Nightwatching, which is based on a period in Rembrandt's life.

There were gasps among film students when he took aim at some of the biggest names. "Here's a real provocation: [US video artist] Bill Viola is worth 10 Martin Scorseses. Scorsese is old-fashioned and is making the same films that [the pioneering director] DW Griffiths was making early last century," he said.

He added that cinema should not be "a playground for Sharon Stone". "Cinema is wasted on cinema – most cinema is bedtime stories for adults," he said.

Warning his audience that he liked a fight, Greenaway dismissed a comment by one Westerner in the audience, who said his films were proof that cinema was very much alive, describing her remarks as "not intelligent" and "humbug". Earlier, he said a line in Welsh, perplexing the Korean translators. "Every medium has to be redeveloped, otherwise we would still be looking at cave paintings... New electronic film-making means the potential for expanding the notions of cinema has become very rich indeed."

The generation "who grew up with laptops in their cots" wanted greater participation and "to do away with the elitism of Hollywood", replacing it with a cinema based on image rather than text. "We're still illustrating Jane Austen novels – what a waste of time," he said.

Greenaway trained as a painter, and considered cinema a "pathetic adjunct" to that medium. His visually rich, difficult movies, often based on paintings or visual images, have earned him accusations of intellectual snobbery but he said that he firmly believed the changes in how films were made would ultimately be acceptable to a wider audience. He pointed to controversy when the first Star Wars movie came out, how people felt it was too fast and too difficult to understand, but how the way it was made had entered the language of film.

"We're obliged to look at new media... it's exciting and stimulating, and I believe we will have an interactive cinema which will make Star Wars look like a 16th-century lantern lecture," Greenaway said.

He said the last film-makers were probably the Germans, including Volker Schloendorff, who is also attending the festival. "Thirty-five years of silent cinema is gone, no one looks at it anymore. This will happen to the rest of cinema. Cinema is dead."

[chaddoli]

what a wanker

[tryavna]

"If you shoot a dinosaur in the brain on Monday, it's tail is still waggling on Friday," said Greenaway.

This doesn't sound like a metaphor to me; I believe he's actually done it.

[domino harvey]

It should be noted that September has 30 days.

best part

[Oedipax]

Greenaway's been saying this for years, and the French for many years before that!

[Oedipax]

It should be noted that September has 30 days.

best part

I really doubt the irony is lost on Greenaway. The whole thing is strongly polemical, and not without a sense of humor, even if Greenaway comes off as pretty humorless.

[tavernier]

As others have noted, PG has been saying this kind of thing for decades--probably since Draughtsman--only now he's saying it more forcefully and stridently because no one is listening to him (or distributing his films).

[cdnchris]

It should be noted that September has 30 days.

best part

My wife's birthday is Sept 30th and I once thought it was Sept 31st and, well... I've never been able to live that down.

[toiletduck!]

Muy claps for Greenaway. It's refreshing to hear at least a few cinema artists are staying strident. What a fun read!

-Toilet Dcuk

[Gropius]

This will happen to the rest of cinema. Cinema is dead."

Sounds like he hasn't seen the box office receipts for Spiderman 3.

Greenaway is one of my favourite directors, but there is a note of cartoonish exaggeration to his much-rehearsed polemic. We're still a considerable way off from interactive, virtual reality 'choose-your-own-adventure' consoles being installed in place of cinemas, although no doubt it will happen eventually (to the likely short-term impoverishment of the medium, if the predictable templates of video game design are anything to go by).

[miless]

many of the quotes from that article are from these:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QvAl9QDZwW4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-t-9qxqdVm4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=V4-Z58ign-o
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0gj_l_QP48o
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pSzsy1NxEVo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MZDZXJe-9eQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rx-oybwrBFY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x5bCqvRz_YE
along with many, many more.

[colinr0380]

"We should not regard the cinema as a playground for Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone"

I get the impression from this quote that Greenaway did not like The Specialist very much!

[Oedipax]

This will happen to the rest of cinema. Cinema is dead."

Sounds like he hasn't seen the box office receipts for Spiderman 3.

If you ask me, that could practically be its headstone!

If all cinema means anymore to the popular imagination is $200 million dollar comic book movies... then it becomes something else, is it really cinema? Or is it a theme park attraction? Especially when you consider how much hype is going in the direction of the rebirth of 3-D as a way of drawing audiences in again.

I think if you took a cross sample of the population today, you would find many more people are excited about what they're seeing on TV from week to week than they are anything playing in theaters - with the only real exceptions being the hugely successful franchises of this decade, the LOTR's, the Spidermans, the Pirates, and so on...

[Dylan]

Also, let us not forget that Dziga Vertov pronounced cinema as dead in (I believe) 1930.

[Orphic Lycidas]

Not that I care what Greenaway ever has to say but if he didn't want cinema dead he shouldn't have contributed to it by making such crap movies.

[Robotron]

As a filmmaker, Greenaway is sometimes one of the most intelligent and interesting. As a lecturer, unfortunately, he's sensationalist trash.

[Antoine Doinel]

"We should not regard the cinema as a playground for Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone"

Clearly, Greenway hasn't stepped foot in a mainstream theatre in quite some time.

[flyonthewall2983]

Or maybe he really, really hated The Specialist.

[miless]

He probably made the statements right around that time when those two were all over the news for Basic Instinct II and Rocky Balboa (and how everyone was saying "They're back, and they're here to stay"... despite the fact that they were both just a flash in the pan)

[zedz]

If all cinema means anymore to the popular imagination is $200 million dollar comic book movies... then it becomes something else, is it really cinema? Or is it a theme park attraction?

No, it's definitely cinema. Maybe not good cinema, but cinema all the same. I don't have a lot of patience for aging white male commentators like Greenaway who think that 'cinema' is a synonym for 'the kind of films I like' (or more likely 'the kind of films I used to like when I bothered going to the cinema back in the 60s') - hence portentous "this film is not cinema" or "cinema is dead" proclamations.

Cinema and its technology has always been evolving, and it's always churned out far more shit than masterpieces. If you're genuinely committed to the form, your job, as always, is to pick through the shit and find the masterpieces, not to wash your hands of the whole messy business.

[Svevan]

Though his point is jumbled, I think the best thing Greenaway has to say is that cinema may just be one step in a path towards a new art; in a way, I read him as happy that multimedia and interactivity are taking over (consider his release plans for Tulse Luper). His comparison between film and cave paintings is not meant to glorify cave paintings but condemn film as a stepping stone onto something greater.

edit: and what I mean to say is that though Greenaway jumbles his point by denouncing Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone, he isn't necessarily saying "my type of movies are dead." He's saying that we may have moved on, as a culture.

Not that I want that to happen, nor do I think cinema is as fleeting as a cave painting; certainly it paved the way for the existence of video games and interactive websites, and all three of these can be centered around a single franchise.

[Gropius]

If you're genuinely committed to the form, your job, as always, is to pick through the shit and find the masterpieces

Doesn't that statement presuppose, like Greenaway, that there is some permanent set of criteria (agreed upon by the 'genuinely committed') for determining 'masterpieces'?

[blindside8zao]

It's interesting to think that in an age where everything develops and passes away so quickly (even if it doesn't develop to maturity) that even mediums could arise and pass away quickly. I don't mean to make a good/bad value judgment on our age by saying this but only to marvel at the oddity of the idea in contrast to the long history of painting/poetry. If videogames take over cinema they better step up to the plate faster.

[zedz]

If you're genuinely committed to the form, your job, as always, is to pick through the shit and find the masterpieces

Doesn't that statement presuppose, like Greenaway, that there is some permanent set of criteria (agreed upon by the 'genuinely committed') for determining 'masterpieces'?

No, you can find your own (rather than whining about the presumed non-existence of something you haven't bothered to look for). Granted, my statement does presuppose that films that make life worth living for the individual searcher still exist. That's a position I passionately defend, but it's hard to engage in discussion with somebody who asserts the opposite (i.e. "there are no worthwhile films being made anymore") because I doubt we'd have any aesthetic grounds in common.

[domino harvey]

Greenaway decrees: "Films blow but hey guys I make films too so uh"