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Quote by Peter Greenaway

“In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst.”

Quote by Peter Greenaway

Author

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway is a British film director known for his unique artistic style and innovative narrative techniques. His films often incorporate historical, cultural, and philosophical elements, challenging viewers to think deeply. more

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“I loved Latin -- the grammar, the difficult tenses, the history -- but for some reason I was very bad at it, shamefully and blushingly bad at it. ... In moments of stress the embarrassment of how bad I was at Latin -- a subject I loved -- really hit me. It was like being laughed at by someone you desperately loved.”

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“Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth.”

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“I would be curious about one of those Jane Austen women - you know - long-suffering, dutiful - but all right in the end - a plump 19th century type, five foot four, ringlets, brown eyes, long fingers.”

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“One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing -- being a data bank -- and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book.”

Knows Has Beens Book War Might Three Courses Economy Four Written Masters Hero Pages Supreme Data Might Have Been My Hero Borges

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“I made a very bad mistake; I miscounted these scraps of information on the record as 92, and in continual homage to this man who had been so influential to me, I began creating or constructing my own films on this so-called "magic" number of 92 ... but when I eventually made a film about John Cage and met him, I explained this to him, and he found it very amusing because there are only 90 stories on the two sides of the record, and I'd based three years of my filmic career on this mathematical error!”

“It seems to me that dominant cinema seems to require an empathy or a sympathy between the film and the audience which is basically to do with the manipulation of the emotions and it seems to me again -- and this is a very subjective position -- that most cinema seems to trivialise the emotions, sentimentalising or romanticising them.”

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“I was continually connected with the whole world and never got any rest. At the moment, I spend only a few hours weekly on the net, that's just better for me.”

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“Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure.”

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Source: Peter Greenaway: Interviews

“That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.”

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“Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers.”

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