The Pillow Book (1996)
O U T S T A N D I N G
“I always have this eye for the emotion of the pictorial image and try very hard to expand filmmaking language.”
Goltzius And The Pelican Company (2012)
C O N T R I B U T I O N
84
B R I T I S H
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989)
T O
“Journalists have often said that you’re only allowed to make three good fi lms,” he smiles. “I hope I have a bit more time to make those good three fi lms, but that’s probably not true anymore. So I think my reputation will probably be associated with The Draughtman’s Contract, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover, and The Pillow Book. But I have made 15 fi lms and we’re working on the 16th now. Cinema’s a lottery – you can have a great script, great actors, everything you need; put it in the oven; take it out and…” A lot of Greenway’s recent output has been outside of conventional cinema, including exhibition and installations in Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny, Barcelona’s John Miro Gallery and the Louvre in Paris, and he believes this reflects the changing nature of how we consume and create images.
C I N E M A
“Didn’t David Hockney say that if you’re English and you can still boil an egg when you’re 70, they’ll give you a medal?” he says, wryly. “But it sounds rather grand. I was a little surprised. I’m a bit of an outsider as a fi lmmaker. I haven’t lived in England now for about 20 years. I live in Amsterdam and I feel like a European now. I’m at an age that my next great adventure must be death, though the last three fi lms I’ve made are not inherently about that, they’re more about notions of immortality through art. Although, if you seek immortality, you shouldn’t be a fi lmmaker. Cinema is very ephemeral, it needs so much technology to reproduce it. The first 30 years of cinema was silent and who watches silent cinema anymore?” So how does he feel he’ll be remembered for his work?