MOSCOW, November 24. /TASS/. Acknowledged British film director Peter Greenaway is visiting Russia’s Republic of Crimea in spring 2015 to show his films and meet his fans, the head of Russia's State Film Fund, Nikolai Borodachev, told TASS on Monday.
“Peter Greenaway has been willing to visit Crimea several times. He is going to show his films and organize artistic meetings there. This idea has already been approved by local authorities. The director first planned to visit the republic in September, but did not manage to come, so he decided to postpone his visit till the forthcoming spring,” he said, adding that the film fund had been cooperating with the director for a long time.
In particular, the fund organized public film shows of Greenaway’s works at different Moscow sites. Besides, the fund’s head, Borodachev, and Greenway are now busy preparing an international joint project about the outstanding Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, famous for his silent films Strike and Battleship Potemkin (both shot in 1925), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).
“Our cooperation has always brought fruit despite Greenway’s temper,” Borodachev said.
The director has been to Russia several times. He attended the Moscow International Film Festival and worked with Russian actors. The director always stressed that he paid homage to Russian culture.
The British filmmaker said that every time he visits Moscow he feels inspired and touched by the fact that Eisenstein had worked there. Greenaway said he believed the latter could be put alongside with such world masters as Rembrandt in painting and Beethoven in music.
Peter Greenaway is among the most demanded European film directors of the time. His style is noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance, Baroque and Flemish painting. His films are traditionally characterised by scenic composition, illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death. He is most famous for his works The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), The Pillow Book (1996) and Prospero’s Books (1991).
This year, Greenaway has been working on his new film also dedicated to the outstanding Russian film director. Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2014) follows Eisenstein as he spends ten days in 1931 in Guanajuato, Mexico, where he falls in love. His sensual experiences there turn out to have been crucial in his life and his films. From being a formal filmmaker with films about conceptual ideas, his trip to Mexico humanises Eisenstein as a filmmaker, and his films become more sympathetic to the human condition.
“At a time when cinema is dying, it is pertinent to celebrate cinema’s greatest practitioner. The business of cinema never seems to change. Many of the problems Eisenstein had in 1931 have reappeared all over again. Difficulties of financing, problems of logistics, cultures and language barriers. Such as Eisenstein rose to these problems, so do we,” the film’s author said.
The work got into top 200 most anticipated films of 2014, ranking 28.