
Directing
Born April 5, 1942 · Newport, Gwent, Wales, UK
Peter Greenaway, CBE (born 5 April 1942) is a Welsh writer-director, painter, and video artist based in Amsterdam. Throughout the late 1960s and '70s, he produced several experimental documentary/mockumentary shorts while working as a film editor for the Central Office of Information. This early period culminated in "The Falls" (1980), a three-hour mockumentary indexing the strange effects of the VUE (the Violent Unknown Event) on 92 people whose names begin with the letters F-A-L-L. He made his dramatic feature film debut with "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982), and throughout the 1980s directed a string of critically acclaimed and frequently controversial films: "A Zed & Two Noughts" (1985), "The Belly of an Architect" (1987), "Drowning by Numbers" (1988), and his best-known work, the vicious Thatcher-era satire "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" (1989). In the 1990s, he directed the Shakespeare adaptation "Prospero's Books" (1991), controversial religious satire "The Baby of Mâcon" (1993), erotic drama "The Pillow Book" (1996), and "8½ Women" (1999), an homage to the films of Federico Fellini, a major influence on Greenaway. In the early 2000s, Greenaway embarked on the ambitious "Tulse Luper" project, a multimedia body of historical fiction revolving around the life of the eponymous fictional hero. In addition to novels, CD-ROMs, online material, and a touring exhibition, the project spawned a trilogy of feature films: "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story" (2003), "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea" (2004), and "The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish" (2004). The trilogy was followed by a fourth feature, "A Life in Suitcases" (2005), which abridges the Tulse Luper saga into a single film. Since the mid 2000s, Greenaway's film work has focused on idiosyncratic, heavily fictionalised biopics dedicated to some of his favourite artists: Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn in "Nightwatching" (2007), Dutch Baroque engraver Hendrik Goltzius in "Goltzius and the Pelican Company" (2012), Soviet Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein in "Eisenstein in Guanajuato" (2015), and Romanian-French sculptor Constantin Brâncuși in "Walking to Paris" (TBD). Greenaway has lived and worked in Amsterdam since the mid 1990s. He is married to artist Saskia Boddeke, with whom he has two children. He also has two children from a previous marriage to potter Carol Greenaway.

The Missing Nail
2019

Luther and His Legacy
2017

Giovanna D'Arco
2016

Eisenstein in Guanajuato
2015

3x3D
2013

Goltzius & the Pelican Company
2012

Atomic Bombs on the Planet Earth
2012

The Wedding at Cana
2009

Rembrandt's J'Accuse...!
2008

Nightwatching
2007

Peopling The Palaces
2007
Greenaway: The Shorts
2006
Writing on Water
2005

A Life in Suitcases: A History of Tulse Luper
2005

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish
2005

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea
2004

Visions of Europe
2004
The European Showerbath
2004

The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Antwerp
2003

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story
2003

Cinema16: British Short Films
2003

The 92 Faces of Peter Greenaway
2002

The Man in the Bath
2001

The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama
1999

8 ½ Women
1999

In the Dark
1996

Lumière & Company
1995

The Pillow Book
1995

Ritratti di cinema
2025
Peter Greenaway: The Film Architect - Beyond The Belly of an Architect
2023

The Missing Nail
2019

Tintoretto: A Rebel in Venice
2019

The Greenaway Alphabet
2018

The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch
2016

The Wedding at Cana
2009

Rembrandt's J'Accuse...!
2008
Close to Greenaway
2004

Cinema16: British Short Films
2003

The 92 Faces of Peter Greenaway
2002

The Death of a Composer: Rosa, a Horse Drama
1999

8 ½ Women
1999

Peter Greenaway: A Documentary
1992

Fear of Drowning
1989
Hubert Bals Handshake
1989

The Falls
1982

H Is for House
1976

Dear Phone
1976

Windows
1974