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Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway Quotes

Film director

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Famous Peter Greenaway Quotes

“I always think that if you deal with extremely emotional, even melodramatic, subject matter, as I constantly do, the best way to handle those situations is at a sufficient remove. It's like a doctor and a nurse and a casualty situation. You can't help the patient and you can't help yourself by emoting. And I don't think cinema is intended for therapy, so I object also to that huge, massive manipulation which is perpetrated on the public.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“We have to move away from the concept of screening in cinemas. This can be achieved with the new technologies. I enjoy my films and the fact that I can include you in them as well. Cinema is only a small part of a much greater phenomenon. We transcend the barriers of culture. DVDs' image quality and longevity provide us with new prospects. They are a powerful medium. I think they were invented especially for me.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“An American critic wrote that she would rather be forced to read the New York telephone directory three times than watch the film A Zed and Two Noughts, a third of which was a homage to Vermeer. Conceivably, if you are a list-enthusiast like me, the New York telephone directory might be fascinating, demographically, geographically, historically, typographically, cartographically; but I am sure no compliment was intended.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised.”

DreamSecretStruggleProduceProjectsMeetingsEnormousObligationEnthusiasmYour DreamsPushingContemplatingRehearsalRealisedNew ProjectsDilettantes
Author:Peter Greenaway
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“Here was opportunity to make an audience walk and move, be sociable in a way never dreamed of by the rigors of cinema-watching, in circumstances where many different perspectives could be brought to bear on a series of phenomena associated with the topics under consideration. Yet all the time it was a subjective creation under the auspices of light and sound, dealing with a large slice of cinema's vocabulary.”

WayDifferentLightMovingOpportunitySoundWalksAudienceCreationPerspectiveBearsCircumstancesSeriesCinemaConsiderationTopicsVocabularySubjectiveDifferent PerspectiveRigorSociable
Author:Peter Greenaway
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“Cinema doesn't connect with the body as artists have in two thousand years of painting, using the nude as the central figure which the ideas seem to circulate around. I think it is important to somehow push or stretch or emphasize, in as many ways as I can, the sheer bulk, shape, heaviness, the juices, the actual structure of the body. Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.”

ThinkingWayYearsFirstsI CanTwoImportantIdeasBodySeemsArtistFiguresPaintingPersonalityThousandShapesStructureCinemaSheerThousand YearsJuiceHeaviness
Author:Peter Greenaway
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“My favourite film-maker west of the English Channel is not English - but to me doesn't seem American either - David Lynch - a curious American-European film-maker. He has - against odds - achieved what we want to achieve here. He takes great risks with a strong personal voice and adequate funds and space to exercise it. I thought Blue Velvet was a masterpiece.”

WantSeemsFilmStrongVoiceSpaceRiskAchieveExerciseBlueWestCuriousFundMakersFavouriteOddsMasterpieceAdequateVelvetGreat RiskStrong PersonAgainst The OddsBlue Velvet
Author:Peter Greenaway
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“I acknowledge Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. They are prostlytizers of English socialism preaching to the converted and telling us what we already know. Cinema is best served away from documentary neo-realism. I come from a tradition of post-post-Italian neo-realism in England, where we've produced the best television in the world. But to paraphrase Truffaut, the English have no visual imagination.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“Film is such an extraordinary rich medium which can handle so many different modes of operation, combining together in the same place all these extraordinary disciplines which may be executed in their own right - music, writing, picture making of all kinds, and I often feel that some filmmakers make films with one eye closed and two hands tied behind their backs.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“As you probably know, I'm often accused of intellectual exhibitionism and all forms of elitism. Although I can understand this point of view, it's a rather wasted argument because, if we regard areas of information as being elite and therefore somehow not usable, it means our centre-ground of activity becomes very, very impoverished.”

IfsKnowsMeanI CanFormViewsInformationActivityIntellectualAreasArgumentRegardPoint Of ViewElitesCentreAccusedElitismExhibitionism
Book:Peter Greenaway: Interviews
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“Tulse Luper, who without too many confessions, in a sense, is a fictive version of me. I have to say he has far more exciting adventures, and certainly a lot of them sexual, than ever I've experienced. But in a sense, what you do with an alter ego, you give them all sorts of permissions and licences which you know you'll never be able to embrace in your real life.”

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Author:Peter Greenaway
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“On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not.”

PeopleBelieveMatterWholeFactsHandsFilmI BelieveViewsBehindsPositionPerspectiveCertaintyIronyHidingCosmicConfusingUnimportantViewpointsHiding Out
Book:Peter Greenaway: Interviews
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