Peter Greenaway - Nederlands Film Festival

In that sense, I would like to regard an audience as an ally - a conversational ally - that isnot obliged to be "moved", or manipulated or tricked or coerced into anywhere he or shedoens't want to go - that can retain some detachment from events - and can findevidence of a tone wich says - look this is a film - a fabrication - wich embraces all sortsof information a subject for your enjoyment. What I'd particularly like you to enjoy isvisual, sensuous images made up of light - wich is the only true cinematic characteristic -that is not ignoring what others have said or suggested or done - in a world that isconstantly fascinating and bizzare ........... against this background - here is a narrative -an artificial construct that holds all the information together - not so you should onlywant to know what happens - but be just as interested in how it happens ...........However - such a model for cinema is not too familiar.I have watched people leave the cinema when a film of mine is being shown ... and I haveobserved that there are often three separate audiences in one - the first part of theaudience - usually small - leave very quickly - maybe within the first ten minutes -sometimes sooner - I get the impression that they go straight to the box-office and askfor their money back - I presume - no doubt to comfort my discomfort - that they havesomehow been misinformed and have come into the wrong cinema expecting somethingelse...The second part of the audience leave around 40 minute mark - about a third of the waythrough the film - this must be around ten o'clock on an evening performance - so Icomfort myself by presuming that they have a train to catch or the baby-sitter won't stayafter 11 o'clock - wich is unlikely because most audiences don't need baby-sitters becausethey haven't got babies - because they are under 25 .... this secound group is larger thanthe first lot and much more worrying because they have obviously given me the benefit ofthe doubt - and found the film seriously wanting .... they stayed until they couldobviously stay no longer. I am convinced that they are the most dangerous - because theyleave determined to tell everyone how bad the movie was and how they walked out of it.......The third part of the audience stay. But by and large I still don't know how they think. Iremeber going to a film where the audience rocked with appreciative laughter from startto finish yet sixty per cent of them returned a questionaire saying that the movie wasindifferent and they would probably have forgotten it within 24 hours ...M.Where does the idea for a film come from? The history of the cinema suggest that most ofthe ideas come from other art-forms - from the theatre - from the novel - from otherliterary sources - diaries, television adaptions - even from opera. The secound largecategory would be from biography - faithful, unfaitful or fictionalised. Then from socalledreal-life events .... and then ........ and at a very small percentage of the total film spectrum - can there be said to beideas that are conceived and fashioned entirely for the cinema. Does this matter? Afterall it is difficult to accredit Shakespeare with an ariginal plot. I think it does matter.