FW: [kino] Peter Greenaway report

[Dmitry Karpeev]

I saw 3 movies.  In fact it's just 3 parts of a single movie -- the whole
would be too long for one sitting.  

92 DVDs is something else -- either a future or an ongoing project.  He
mentioned something about perhaps giving them away at screenings etc., since
he's not sure how to distribute them.  I'm not even sure it is happening, or
will happen, fully or partially.

The last 20-30 minutes of part 3 were made in Russia.  According to the
titles, Renata Litvinova and Kristina Orbakaite  were in it.  But as hard as
I tried, I didn't find Litvinova (maybe she didn't look like herself), and I
only have a guess as to whom Orbakaite might have played.  As with many of
his movies, it was hard to capture exactly what was going on, so I missed
some characters that were in the titles. In particular, the Litvinova
character.

Dima

PS The Russian part might not have been made in Russia, since the action
there takes place "on the bridge", which is actually a metaphor for a
chessboard.  Or maybe on a chessboard, that is a metaphor for a bridge
between the East and the West, where prisoner exchanges take place.  In any
event, it was on a set.  Russian studio A12 (or 12A?) was involved,
according to the titles.  Now, Isabella Rossellini had a much more prominent
role, but that was in part 2.  I think.  If I remember it right.  It all
sort of runs together in my head. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dmitri Krioukov [mailto:dima at caida.org] 
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2004 8:50 PM
To: Dmitry Karpeev
Cc: kino at caida.org
Subject: RE: [kino] Peter Greenaway report

dimas,

92 dvds with luper's suitcases arrest
me with surprise. on imdb, i can find
only three. can you clarify? how many
did you see? one? also, which one was
made in russia?

i understand greenaway's obsession with
numbers, but 92 dvds... how much each?
--
dima.
http://www.caida.org/~dima/

-----Original Message-----
From: kino-bounces at caida.org [mailto:kino-bounces at caida.org]On Behalf Of
Dmitry Karpeev
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2004 6:13 PM
To: kino at caida.org
Subject: [kino] Peter Greenaway report


Last Wed. Peter Greenaway himself made an appearance at Chicago’s Facets
Multimedia to introduce one of his latest movies “Tulse Luper’s Suitcases”.
He struck me as extremely gracious and sharp.  He said a few words before
and answered questions after the movie.
In his opinion, there is a revolution afoot in the cinema – the digital
revolution.  It has the potential to reinvent the cinema, which, in Mr.
Greenaway’s view, has been stuck in the “animated novel” paradigm nearly
since its invention.  He himself thinks that the two cliché words,
“interactive” and “multimedia”, encode the future of the cinema, although it
is hard, if at all possible, to implement them in the setting of a
traditional movie cinema.   For now, his movies seem to seek to explode the
linear narrative structure of a movie, which ordinarily makes it akin to a
text, and bring forward the image.  Many images.  Multiple images.  At once.
And music.  Et cetera.
It makes for difficult watching in some instances.  But extremely beautiful
too.  His favorite director is S. Esenstein, followed by Godard at some
distance.  Of the contemporary there are Lynch and Cronenberg that he feels
conceptual closeness to.  Here’s something interesting, I think: Peter
Greenaway use of nudes in his movies is both a reflection of his esthetic
origins as a painter, and a challenge, to some extent, to the puritan
sentiment as well as the stereotype that only attractive women in their 20s
and 30s appear naked on film, primarily before a sex scene.  He gives a
chance for all kinds of people to be naked on the screen and for all sorts
of reasons.

It turns out that Mr. Greenaway has had 2 painting exhibits, has written
several books, directed (?) an opera (with more in the works) and is
planning to put out 92 DVDs, one for each of Tulse Luper’s suitcases,
apparently.
There is a dude in Montreal that has constructed an interactive trailer, in
which all or part of “Tulse Luper’s Suitcases” can be experience
interactively, in any order: any scene (or scene inside a scene, of which
there are many), any piece of music (mostly electronically recycled
Prokofiev), any subtle political, geographical, literary or historic
reference examined (he’s worse than Godard in this respect, his ideal
audience requiring many years of rigorous schooling, it seems), et cetera.
Now, this is both interactive and multimedia!  But is it cinema?

Dima.

Guy Muddin is visiting Facets next Wed., so stay tuned.