It is essentially a crime film but its approach to that genre is miles away from convention. His first mainstream film, The Draughtsman’s Contract, in fact was about a skilled artist (a draughtsman) hired by a wealthy family estate in the 17th century. Where the classic Hollywood approach to making films would be to bring a screenplay or novel to life, Greenaway took a different approach by taking influence from the world of painting and visual arts, even with a lot of his film’s subjects relating to the arts. They seemed somewhat exotic, and well, very English, at least by the standards of what was considered popular for films in both mainstream and underground cinema in Canada. In the rental shops the covers for Greenaway’s films struck you with images of incredible costumes, sets, and with colourful titles such as The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover and Drowning by Numbers. On this list there was director Peter Greenaway, whose films I was lead to based on one of the aforementioned reasons. There was a growling list of films I’d read about, had been recommended or that I found was an influence for any particular musician that I was into at the time so I’ll go through them one by one. It was a few years after settling into Vancouver that I think my interest in film really started to pick up so I’d frequent these places and started expliring. As the years increase between the time now and the time back then, I’ve forgotten the names of many of these places although Black Dog Video and Videomatica still stick strongly in my mind. And by that I mean a lot of less accessible stuff that you wouldn’t be finding at Blockbuster or any of the standard rental places. Around the turn of the millenium there were a number of places in when I used to live in Vancouver where you could go to seek out the far fringes of cinema, rent out a few films for a couple of nights and then cram in watching them all before having to return them by the due date.
0 kommentar(er)
