This Friday features the first installment of the Spring 2008 Electromediascope, the Greenaway Chronicles. This season showcases the work of Peter Greenaway, a prolific filmmaker, visual artist, curator and writer. The Greenaway Chronicles will explore more than 20 years of Greenaway’s experimental film work.
Originally trained as a painter, he began making films in 1966. This Friday, enjoy six shorts from his early filmmaking career. I think Greenaway has really fascinating topics for his films. He takes an interest in people who have experienced something odd in their life that is perhaps out of their control. For example, Windows (1974) is a short, documentary-like film on people who have accidentally fallen out of windows. Another intriguing aspect of his work is the brevity of some of his films. I’m sure it’s much more difficult to create a short film than a feature film.
The last two nights of Electromediascope feature Greenaway’s ambitious, pseudo-documentary film, The Falls (1980). Here again, Greenaway examines the lives of 92 people who have been affected by Violent Unknown Events (VUE). These fictional sufferers of a VUE have experienced disability, immortality and learned peculiar languages. Friday, April 18 will preview #1 - #42 of these stories, and Friday, April 25 will present the conclusion, #43 - #92.
Peter Greenaway’s work seems fascinating and bizarre to me. As I was reading about Greenaway and his vast collection of work, I had one primary thought: How on earth does he come up with the ideas for his films? He doesn’t just direct all his films; he writes them too. It makes me very curious about what he was like as a child. Can you imagine the fun, creative (possibly strange) games he would have thought to play with all the neighborhood kids? What an interesting way to spend an evening!