Hail Documentarians,
We were all a little excited and starstruck, director PETER GREENAWAY, the most painterly of all filmmakers was the keynote speaker of the conference. If you’re a Generation X-er like myself, then you’ll remember Greenaway making ground-breaking films like The Draughtsman Contract (1982), A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987) The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). And no, not a documentary among them.SANDY GEORGE did the introduction and went through Greenaway’s history as a filmmaker and explained that he is focussing more on curated works for art museums now. He was also a VJ. And now here he was, with us in Perth, Western Australia for two and half days.
MR GREENAWAY strode up to the mic vigorously. For those of us who ask this kind of question to ourselves, he soon told us that he was 65 years old. Then he proceeded to wow the full house that he had drawn to the big room at the AIDC.
“I’m here under false pretences, “ he said, “I hardly think of myself as a filmmaker. “ He said that he always had, “the avowed intention of a career in the manufacture of images” And then the irresistible statement, “I stand before you at my age and I’m still wondering what I should do when I grow up.” Nods all around the audience at that one and a few knowing laughs. “There’s not much else I would rather do, he said.
And yet. he had a period in the 1990s of almost giving up filmmaking entirely.
If I were allowed to come back again, I would like to come back as an architect,” he said. Those of us who remembered his film Belly of an Architect said, “uh-huh” internally. “These are people you can’t avoid. Architecture has a dominance because we have to live in these places.” For those with a wary bent of mind, Greenaway was clearly setting out some categories and was about to make some comparisons.
And then he was into it. His thesis was that we have had 8000 years of painting and 112 years of filmmaking and yet the former had hardly affected the latter. He queried whether cinema was really 112 years old – “That’s if you believe that it was invented in France by the Lumiere brothers.” Greenaway was being wry; questioning the orthodoxy of our cherished beliefs about Cinema.
“I’m convinced that Cinema was invented at the beginning of the 17th Century by painters who were studying the manipulation of light.” He quoted Bazin who said that Cinema combined Literature, Painting and Theatre. “But there’s precious little painting,” Greenaway said.
He then went on to make the point that despite being around for 112 years and despite there being the visual medium of painting as inspiration, filmmaking remained resolutely text-based. In his opinion. “You documentary makers have it even worse, you’ve actually got ‘document’ inside your word. You’re lost to start with. Your text pushes everything and image comes drifting in from the side.”
He was positing a thesis. Being provocative. Or “throwing down” as we used to say on 21 Jump Street.
“We’ve had 112 years of cinema, or illustrated text. We still haven’t invented something entirely autonomous. It is associated with other vocabulary. I can’t go to a producer with a book of sketches, four paintings and a lithograph,” he said. He prodded the audience and encouraged delinquent behaviour, “When the money is really in your pocket, throw the goddamn script away and make your film.”
“Text is in its rightful place in the bookshop rather than the cinema. Derrida said ‘the image has the last word’ – which is very good in any language.”
And then, the big statement. “For 8000 years the world has been dominated by the text makers. They are the gate-keepers. Since the digital revolution, the age of the text-maker is over. The age of the image-maker begins. If you believe this – this is the beginning of a golden age.”
“My first audience was my brother and his dog. These things start in an uncontrolled and unserious way. I sometimes think that you need to see all your films by 21. Because suspension of disbelief is a very fragile thing. “
“The main difference between me and you is that I know I’m telling lies. Documentary filmmakers are like any makers of fiction.”
“Cinema has used up all its tropes and paradigms. A new technology comes along and creates its own vocabulary. As with any new technology there are three groups of people who come with it. The innovators, the consolidators and the third group who turn the whole thing upside down again.
The Greenaway showed us something of what he considered part of the new digital age. It was film of a curated work in an Italian Gallery. He called it “2000 Years of Italian design in five minutes”. This led to his claiming that his work is not appreciated in his homeland and that in fact, it was the Italians who best appreciated it. Consequently he had spent some time there of late, curating exhibitions in art galleries. These featured his explorations in what he could achieve with the video image in a museum space,
This included concepts like a large room with connected projections on all three walls and the ceiling. This involved images of 120 green-screened actors against numerous digitally manipulated backgrounds. The story wasn’t a narrative although it was screened in an hourly loop at the museum. All dialogue and narration was in Italian.
But this was all merely preparatory to the screening of a work he created using Rembrandt’s painting Nightwatch as the literal basis. The details of the painting were scanned into a computer and subsequently manipulated in a number of ways. The end result was projected back onto the painting itself.
We saw a film of this – it was a live computerised, digitised performance over the painting. The original narrative of the painting – an unlawful killing by musketeers – was retold using a rich soundscape and an amazing number of visual effects. Flat objects and people were made to seem three-dimensional, The foreground, middle ground and background were highlighted according to the soundtrack. Lightning flashed, thunder broke and rain poured all over this painted crime scene.
“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?” Greenaway said after his seven-minute film. The audience applauded. Almost to a person they seemed to be saying, yes, it is rather awesome. The director then informed us that a number of galleries were looking for something of the same computerised re-imagining for some of their great works. Monet’s Water Lilles, Picasso’s Guernica.
Finally Greenaway showed a long trailer for his forthcoming film on Rembrandt’s life called Nightwatching. Fans of The Office were treated to the sight of Tim (Martin Freeman) as the famous Dutch Painter. For Greenaway fans here was imagery reminiscent of films like the Draughtsman’s Contract.
Greenaway ended his presentation by asking for questions. “I await your provocations,” he said. But we, the audience were too polite. We had been eating out of his hand for a full hour.
In the break after the session, I spoke to a number of people who loved the talk; who loved what he had done with the painting Nightwatch. This is not how I felt.
Personally, I felt that if I had to watch a painting given this kind of treatment, live as it were, for more than a minute, I would be bored, frustrated and extremely annoyed. Of course, he annoyed you,” I was told, “He’s all about the image and you’re a writer.
Fair enough. Except that Greenaway is extremely well-spoken and well-read. He quoted Bazin and Derrida to make his point. His defence of Image over text was extremely wordy and elegantly wordy at that. It was not, say, a multimedia collage of image and sounds that said, the Golden Age of the Image has begun. Is there any way to say that with an image? Isn’t the problem with just images that they may lack meaning and substance?
So I disagree strongly with the notion that we are about to embark on a new art form in which the image is all. But Mr Greenaway made his point well with great clarity and terrific illustrations. He came and told us his view of things and stirred up thought, conversation and a little consternation. It was everything one requires of a keynote speaker.
The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).
Tags: keynote address, keynote speaker, Nightwatching, Peter Greenaway, Rembrandt, The Nightwatch
