Peter Greenaway: A Life in Pictures

Peter Greenaway, groundbreaking BAFTA-winning British film director, screenwriter and artist explained that “the editor is the king of cinema”.

Greenaway scooped an Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema BAFTA in 2014 for distinctive films like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Prospero’s Books. He told the audience at a special Life in Pictures event that today editors were right at the heart of the filmmaking process.

“Certainly, now in 2016, the king of cinema, the most potent manipulator is the editor,” he said.

“You might have said 30 years ago it was the cameraman. But basically now an editor can do anything with a picture. With the digital revolution you can transmogrify any image into any other image. My great hero Eisenstein was a brilliant film editor, and I think it shows.”

Read the full transcript of Peter Greenaway’s Life in Pictures BAFTA event at Princess Anne Theatre London on 13 April 2016 and explore pictures from the night below:

Greenaway kicked off his career studying painting at Walthamstow School of Art before Ingmar Bergman’s iconic The Seventh Seal inspired him to move into film.

He told the audience that in his work images always come well before words.

“You know it says in the Old Testament, ‘In the beginning was the word’? Sorry, that’s wrong – [it should be] ‘In the beginning was the image’,” he said.

“An Italian journalist asked me several weeks ago, ‘Why is it, Mr Greenaway, you started your career as a painter, and now you are a filmmaker?’ And I very quickly said, ‘I was always disappointed that paintings didn’t have soundtracks.’”

Greenaway learned the nuts and bolts of cinema after joining the Central Office of Information in 1965 and making a string of educational films. He called this experience an “extraordinary opportunity to cut huge amounts of material.”

By 1980 he had shifted into feature films with his debut The Falls. His studied, painterly style developed throughout the eighties and nineties in acclaimed films like The Draughtman’s Contract, Drowning by Numbers and The Pillow Book.

Greenaway explained that in his work he’s always tried to push the limits of what’s possible on film.

“There’s no good [in] moaning and complaining [about the state of film],” he said.

“We have to do something about it, rather like Mr Eisenstein did in 1931.”

Find out more about Greenaway’s Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema award.

­For more inspiring Life in Pictures stories from the world of film, games and TV explore our BAFTA News Stories section.