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Peter Greenaway
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Filmography to 1981 and COI films



1962 Death of Sentiment
8 min.

1966 Train
Approx. 5 min.

1966 Tree
Approx. 16 min. Extract used in 'The Falls'.

1967 Revolution
Approx 8 min.

1967 5 Postcards from Capital Cities
Approx. 35 min.
'... a completed film, featuring the five very different ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Goole, London and Newport...'

1969 Intervals
Exactly 6 min. - not 7 min as stated in the literature.
'Although there were some six films made before it, the first public movie I am still prepared to show with some enthusiasm is 'Intervals', a formal experiment in counting, reprises, repetition and building a sound track with a series of identical pictures. The images are of Venice, the city which, I am sure, in nearly everyone's mind, memory and imagination represents Life on the Water and a City in the Sea, yet in this film, perversely, there is no image of water, though its presence and its influence are forever just out of the frame.'
'...a euphonious montage of Venice street scenes, the picture editing is so diligently rhythmic as to create an almost musical resonance.' Laura Denham
Music by Vivaldi.
click here for futher details.

1971 Erosion
Approx 27 min.
'... a finished film of costal erosion and shot on the Cork coast...'

1973 H is for House
Re-edited 1978. Approx. 10 min. Music by Vivaldi, 'Four Seasons', and Rameau, 'La Poule'. Click here for further details.

1975 Windows
Approx 4 min. Edited to Rameau's 'La Poule'. Click here for further details

1975 Water
Approx. 5 min.
'There was a film simply called 'Water', containing exactly one thousand images of water, and shot languidly and pleasurably in the delightful landscapes of the Welship Brecon Beacons, to appreciate the sheer exuberant entertainment of sun on water...'
A section is included in 'The Falls'.

1975 Water Wrackets
Approx 11 min 15 sec. Narrated by Colin Cantlie, music by Max Eastley, titles by Kenneth Breese, dubbing mixer Tony Anscombe.
'The public filmography lists 'Water-Wrackets', an ironic anthropological tale of mythical animals violently colonizing a real Wiltshire water basin....'
Note: the notes to the video release of this film give the date as 1978 and state, 'A Romanticism, a lyricism, an evocation of time past. Over water images a documentary-style voiceover recounts a military campaign - trivial events, mundane descriptions, 'historical moments' all related to water imagery. The film displays a modernist scepticism about representing 'reality' past or present. A construction of 'legend' that confronts the fictional nature of conventional legends themselves.'
There is a 1969 painting by Greenaway - 'Hannah Takes a Trip' - which features the river Nadder and a few small lakes - Hog, Pole, Pale, Basset, and Horridor, the subject of 'Water Wrackets'.

1976 Goole by Numbers
Approx 40 min.
'... a series of shots of numbers found in this Yorkshire town...' Laura Denham

1976 The Sea in their Blood
Made for the COI. Here's an extract from the script, 'A dogfish in the sea is called rock-salmon on the table. The most desirable part of a mackerel is its head. The tastiest part of a lobster is its tail. Lemmet in the sea is called turbot on the table. Doversole is a luxury, common sole isn't. Herring in the sea can often be a kipper on the table. Most fish is eaten in Britain fried in batter and breadcrumbs. Ten percent is boiled, five percent grilled, three percent is steamed. Very little is eaten raw except by cats and in Japanese restaurants, twenty-nine in London and one in Milton Keynes.'

1977 Dear Phone
Approx. 16 min 40 sec.
The notes to the video release of this film gives the date as 1976 and state, 'Surreal images of red telephone boxes in a variety of locations juxtaposed with images of the actual script - handwritten, heavily scored, near illegible. An obscure narrative that is complex and witty, almost a mockery of the film-as-story. A subverting of the traditional documentary where 'reality' - image track - is coerced by the 'truth' - voice-over sound track. 'Dear Phone' has links with the work of the Surrealists Breton and Aragon, the British documentary movement - in the delivery of the voice-over - as well as the British nonsense verse tradition.'

1978 1-100
Music by Michael Nyman, their first collaboration. Recording available on Brian Eno's 'Obscure Label'.
'... a series of shots of numbers photographed around continental Europe...' Laura Denham

1978 A Walk Through H, the Reincarnation of an Ornithologist
Approx. 40 min 30 sec. Narrated by Colin Cantlie, music by Michael Nyman played by the Campiello Band, maps by Peter Greenaway, camera John Rosenberg, rostrum camera Bert Walker, titles by Kenneth Breese, dubbing mixer Tony Anscombe. With thanks to the co-operation of Jean Williams and Donald Lazenby. A BFI production.

1978 Vertical Features Remake
Approx 45 min. Arts Council of Great Britain.

1978 Eddie Kid
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1978 Cut above the Rest
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1979 Women Artists
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1979 Leeds Castle
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1979 Insight - Zandra Rhodes
Approx 15 min. Central Office of Information.

1980 The Falls
Approx 185 min. Click here for further details.

1980 Lacock Village
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1980 Country Diary
5 min. Central Office of Information.

1981 Act of God
Approx 25 min. Thames TV, London.

1981 Insight - Terence Conran
15 min. Central Office of Information.

1983 The Sea in Their Blood
30 min. Central Office of Information.

1983 The Coastline
25 min. Central Office of Information.
'...a public-broadcast film made for the Central Office of Information...'


Other films.


'There had been an aborted film called The Sea, closely edited to Stockhausen's Gesang der Jugend.....'

'... and many water-orientated projects in various states of completion, some of which saw a certain public light of day requoted in The Falls. Dreams of Water attempted, as an extreme and absurdist, statistical survey of the emphemeral, to categorize people's dreams of water. The Water-Women was a film that parodied Millais's attempts to paint his mistress as Orphelia in a water-tub in his back garden. Some of the written material for this idea was elaborated in The Falls in Biography 18, the biography of Aptesia Fallarme....'

'There was a film-study called Shower, a deliberation on the extraordinarily candid book on the ergonomics of the bathroom by Alexander Kira, demonstrating quite explicitly, and not without prurience, exactly in what order and with what equipment people excreted and micturated, showered, washed, bathed and cleaned their teeth....'