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Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Greenaway’s Homage an Inspired Provocation

Erotically charged and artfully crafted, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is the first of two titles devoted to portions of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s life, and proves Peter Greenaway has lost none of his edge. At the age of 72, British auteur filmmaker maintains his ability to amaze. Ever the provocative experimentalist, he belongs to a rare class of director, one who manages to delight and confound, challenge and dismay even into his later period of film making. There’s a perverse thrill to be had watching the daringness on display in this examination of a Russian legend that bluntly examines his sexual orientation in a way that would never be produced from his native country.

Based out of Netherlands and often focusing on depictions recreating the universe in which iconic works of art originated, Greenaway’s later films...

There’s nothing subtle about Peter Greenaway’s film – not least the great Russian film-maker being anally penetrated while pontificating on Bolshevik history

If you’ve decided to make a work of art in which the subject is also one of the fundamental pioneers of your chosen medium, the thinking, I would imagine, is to go big or go home. Eisenstein in Guanajuato is far from a subtle picture, and hardly what you’d call to everyone’s taste, but it certainly doesn’t lack for enthusiasm, vision or style.

Peter Greenaway, the aesthete British director expatriated to Holland, who set an unsolvable murder mystery at a 17th-century estate with The Draughtsman’s Contract; helped concoct the Nc-17 rating with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and reimagined a freaky-deaky Tempest with Prospero’s Books has chosen Sergei Eisenstein’s “lost” stint in Mexico for the third...

Walking to Paris

Director: Peter Greenaway

Writer: Peter Greenaway

Before he turns 80 years old and cinema dies, auteur Peter Greenaway has announced his plans to finish up thirty projects in the next seven years or so. He’s whittling away at his goal, last year unveiling his first title in a planned trilogy on Sergei Eisenstein at Berlin, the bombastic and beautiful Eisenstein in Guanajuato. With planned projects on Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch and more Eisenstein on the way, Greenaway takes a detour in 2016 with Walking to Paris, a portrait of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who walked from Bucharest to Paris in 1903 and 1904. British actor Emun Elliott (who has appeared in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Exodus: Gods and Kings) stars as Brancusi, while Swiss actress Carla Juri (of the infamous Wetlands (review), 2013) and Scottish actor Gianni Capaldi are also in the cast.

Cast: Emun Elliott, Carla Juri, Gianni Capaldi

Production Co.

Finally, Peter Greenaway's "Eisenstein in Guanajuato" sees the light of day this month at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival. Shot in Mexico, the avant-biopic follows Russian iconoclast Sergei Eisenstein's 10 sensually stirring days spent in the title city in 1931, a heady influence on his life and films. (Trailer below.) Though the British director of such brainy melds of art and film as "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" (1989), "A Zed & Two Naughts" and "The Pillow Book"(1996) has lately been working on experimental art projects, Greenaway has put out a couple of features in recent years, including "Goltzius and the Pelican Company" (2012) with F. Murray Abraham.  A Berlin competition entry, "Eisenstein"'s cast includes Finnish actor Elmer Back in the title role, Mexican actor Luis Alberti in the role of his guide (Palomino Canedo), South African actor Stelio Savante as Hunter S....

Eisenstein in Guanajauto

Director: Peter Greenaway // Writer: Peter Greenaway

Cinema is alive and kicking and so is director Peter Greenaway, though listening to the esteemed auteur often leads one to believe otherwise. The creator of some of the cinema’s most alluring and sometimes controversial works (the unforgettable The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover 1989 or the less renowned The Baby of Macon, 1995), Greenaway has long challenged the visual limits of film. Anyone doubting his continued masterful ability need only look to his last completed feature (sadly without Us distribution), Goltzius and the Pelican Company, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. He also contributed to the 2013 omnibus 3x3D along with Edgar Pera and Jean-Luc Godard. His latest, Eisenstein in Guanajuato is exactly what it says it’s about, a reenactment of the famed filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein at a pivotal moment in his career. After being maligned by...

★★★☆☆"The nipples to itch, the scrotums to tighten, the pricks to rise, the mount of Venus to swell..." goes the piquant promise of British auteur Peter Greenaway's latest, Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012). Bare bodies rotate around static, inactive camerawork. Baroque theatrics smudge over Renaissance architecture. Garish monologues laminated with reflections of invisible water are performed almost directly through the screen. It's all ostensibly comical, fantastically voyeuristic and forcibly sexual; further proof that in a career now spanning over half a century, only Greenaway has the tools to deliver something that is so aesthetically and dramatically his, with no shocks other than shock itself.

As fully expected, Peter Greenaway’s latest endeavour, Goltzius and the Pelican Company, is a sexually charged, surreal and abstract feature film. Fans of the unique auteur, or simply those familiar with his work, will be nonplussed as to the unconventionality of the piece, and fully aware of what they’re getting themselves in for. Conversely, those who haven’t yet seen a Greenaway production, will be wondering just when they’re going to awake from this somewhat deranged daydream.

Ramsey Nasr plays Goltzius, a printmaker who hopes to convince the distinguished, if erratic, totalitarian The Margrave (F. Murray Abraham), who we’re introduced to when on the toilet, calmly peeling an apple. The aim is to convince him to part with some of his wealth, in exchange for live entertainment, performed by Goltzius’ elaborate troupe. However the several vignettes they display provoke much controversy and discussion, as they explore...

★★★☆☆British auteur Peter Greenaway's latest oddity, the elaborately titled Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012), states its intentions in its opening minutes. A man dressed in immaculate period costume, replete with imposing coiffured barnet and an almost absurd European accent introduces himself directly to camera. This is Hendrik Goltzius, a Dutch printmaker being played by Ramsey Nasr, a Dutch writer and actor who was a poet laureate as recently as 2013. "We traded in words. Words in books, words on the stage," he croons before warning that sooner or later we'll be getting into bed with lechery. The following will be lusty and dense, and is likely to exhilarate and infuriate in equal measure.

Exclusive: Dutch producer to resume his long-standing relationship with Peter Greenaway.

Dutch producer Kees Kasander is to resume his long-standing relationship with British director Peter Greenaway – and they already have several new projects together in the pipeline.

Greenaway’s current production - Eisenstein in Guanajuato (sold by Rezo) - is the first film he has made without Kasander for many years. With Kasander unavailable, it was produced instead by fellow Dutch producers Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Submarine alongside Cristina Velasco.

Now, Kasander and Greenaway are back in business together and already looking a long way ahead with 15 projects together.

The next film they are making together is Walking To Paris, a biopic about artist Constantin Brancusi. When he was a young man, Brancusi walked all the way from Romania to Paris. Stealth are in talks to handle international sales. The aim is to start shooting in the autumn.

Kasander is producing...

Exclusive: Dutch producer to resume his long-standing relationship with Peter Greenaway.

Dutch producer Kees Kasander is to resume his long-standing relationship with British director Peter Greenaway – and they already have several new projects together in the pipeline.

Greenaway’s current production - Eisenstein in Guanajuato (sold by Rezo) - is the first film he has made without Kasander for many years. With Kasander unavailable, it was produced instead by fellow Dutch producers Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Submarine alongside Cristina Velasco.

Now, Kasander and Greenaway are back in business together and already looking a long way ahead with 15 projects together.

The next film they are making together is Walking To Paris, a biopic about artist Constantin Brancusi. When he was a young man, Brancusi walked all the way from Romania to Paris. Stealth are in talks to handle international sales. The aim is to start shooting in the autumn.

Kasander is producing...

Other projects supported by Romania’s film fund include Cristian Mungiu’s Rmd and Tudor Giurgiu’s Apropierea.

Romania’s Centrul National al Cinematografiei (Cnc) has become the latest European film fund to be raided by the ubiquitous film-maker Peter Greenaway for a future project.

Greenaway’s Walking To Paris (Mergand Spre Paris), which is being structured as a co-production between his regular producer Kees Kasander’s UK-based Cinatura, Switzerland’s Cobra Film, France’s Cdp Productions and Romania’s Abis Studio, received 291,000 Ron (€65,000) in the results of the 2013 call for projects.

Walking To Paris centres on the 27-year-old Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi who set off a month-long trek across Europe from Romania to Paris in 1903, and will show how Brancusi’s fight for survival and many adventures during his journey influenced his subsequent work.

Greenaway had previously accessed the Croatian Audiovisual Centre for Goltzius And The Pelican Company and the Polish Film Institute for Nightwatching, while...

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

Director: Peter Greenaway

Writer: Peter Greenaway

Producers: Submarine, Fu Works, Climax Films, Paloma Negra Films

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Cast: Elmer Back, Stelio Savante, Maya Zapata, Lisa Owen

While filming had looked to begin this past fall, it now seems like January, 2014 may be a start date for Greenaway’s latest. While he directed a segment in the triptych 3X3, which bowed at Cannes last year, his last feature was the excellent Goltzius and the Pelican Company, which bowed in the Rome Film Festival, 2012. Amidst a flurry of inspired projects, including a biopic on Bosch as a continuation in his painter series, and another project titled Food for Love, an homage to filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is definitely his latest project, which will no doubt be a sumptuous visual experiment.

Gist: The film will address Eisenstein’s 10 day stay in Guanajuato in 1932, when he filmed material for the film Long Live Mexico!

The arthouse director says it is 'a pleasure and a delight' to be honoured for his years of effort and experiment

• Peter Greenaway: 'I plan to kill myself when I'm 80'

Peter Greenaway is to receive the outstanding British contribution to cinema award at this Sunday's Bafta film awards.

The director of The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover will be honoured for more than three decades of film-making. He made his debut in 1980 with The Falls, a post-apocalyptic mock-documentary in 92 short sections.

Greenaway, who is known for his collaborations with the composer Michael Nyman, said: "Given the always complex effort involved, to be permitted in the first place to make films with so many collaborators always astonishes me, and to be permitted the licence to do so with such freedom to continually experiment even more so. Everyone agrees that...

The first photos from the set of Peter Greenaway's new film "Eisenstein in Guanajuato" have surfaced. The film, which follows Russian iconoclast Sergei Eisenstein's ten days spent in the titular city, is currently filming in Mexico. Eisenstein's sensual experiences in Guanajuato in 1931 greatly influenced his life and his films. Check out the photos below. Though the British filmmaker behind such startlingly radical films as "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" (1989) and "The Pillow Book"(1996) has mostly been working on experimental art projects, Peter Greenaway has put out a couple of features in recent years, including "Goltzius and the Pelican Company" (2012) with F. Murray Abraham. The "Eisenstein" cast includes Finnish actor Elmer Back in the title role, Mexican actor Luis Alberti in the role of his guide (Palomino Canedo), South African actor Stelio Savante as Hunter S. Kimbrough and Lisa Owen as Mary Craig Sinclair.  A master visual stylist whose films.

Even though he has spent the last decade ringing the death knell for cinema, Peter Greenaway continues to work in the format anyway, either as a way to go down with the ship, or perhaps to try and right the course (or maybe both). But onward he goes nonetheless, and next month he'll be unveiling his latest, "Goltzius And The Pelican Company," at the Rome Film Festival. A few pics from the film have arrived to give folks a preview. Starring F. Murray Abraham, the film tells the tale of Dutch painter Hendrik Goltzius, known for his erotic depictions of Biblical stories. The film is the second in a series of movies about Dutch painters, and follows 2009's "Nightwatching," which centered on Rembrandt. And certainly, this one looks like it'll be a fairly decadent production, perhaps not unlike his own work, which tends to hold little back. There's no distribution for the film stateside yet,...

If you've kept up with us since we dropped our intial Cannes Film Festival piece back in February, a lot has changed and the field is becoming narrower and more clear in terms of what films and filmmakers are headed to the south of France. It requires a bit of moving puzzle pieces, and putting together bits and bobs of information, but the writing on the wall is beginning to appear, and today, the one moving the pen is The Hollywood Reporter. The trade has likely made a few phone calls of their own and been watching the landscape and today they reveal that "On The Road" and "Cosmopolis" -- two movies already widely expected to hit the fest -- are pretty much locks, while The Weinstein Company's "Cogan's Trade" (aka "Killing Me Softly") is "expected to be on hand." So what else can we expect? 

"Rust And Bone" -...