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" I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?' "
Peter Greenaway
Doing
Cinema
Always
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" Everything I try to do wants to be able to push communication through the notion of the visual image. "
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" I want to be a prime creator - as every self-regarding artist should do. "
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" I think there is no future whatsoever in 3D. It does nothing to the grammar and syntax or vocabulary of cinema. And you get fed up with it in exactly 3 minutes. "
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" I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory. "
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" We have to change the educational curricula and put a lot more emphasis on how important seeing and looking is. "
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" If you knew when you were going to die, wouldn't you make your life more worthwhile? "
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" Some people would say again that my attitudes are cold and cerebral; I suppose if you're thinking about American sentimental movies, I suppose they would be. "
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" Most people are visually illiterate. Most people don't understand images: they don't understand how to interpret them or how to manufacture them. "
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" My biggest critical success was 'The Draughtsman's Contract,' but then it wasn't the English who particularly thought so; it was the French, who are much more interested in Cartesian logic: in finding your way through more cerebral puzzle-making, if you wish. "
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" I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy. "
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" If you think about it, most cinema is built along 19th-century models. You would hardly think that the cinema had discovered James Joyce sometimes. "
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" For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end. "
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Many
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" Thanks to secondary education and the Internet, we're all knowledgeable now - if knowledge means the accumulation of facts. Curators are those who know how to maneuver around that knowledge. "
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" I believe there's no such thing as history; there's only historians, and in English, we've got this word 'his'tory, but what about her story? So that, in the end, the history of the world would be a history of every single one of its members, but of course, you could never get to grips with that. "
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Believe
You
" For 8,000 years, we've had lyric poetry; for 400 years we've had the novel: theatre hands its meaning down in text. Let's find a medium whose total, sole responsibility is the world as seen as a form of visual intelligence. Surely, surely, surely the cinema should be that phenomenon. "
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" Cinema, which demands suspension of disbelief, is an increasingly naive proposition. "
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" The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible. "
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" I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it. "
Peter Greenaway
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Space
" I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein. "
Peter Greenaway
Fascinated
Been
Always
" Whether you're Godard or Almodovar or Scorsese, it's text, text, text. Everything begins with the text, and this is a source of great anguish to me. So please let cinema get on with doing what it does best, which is expressing ideas in visual terms. "
Peter Greenaway
Ideas
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" Cinema ceases to be passive and becomes active: you, the audience, are now, in some senses, in charge of the filmmaking process. You have all got mobile phones, you have all got cam recorders, and you've all got laptops, so you're all filmmakers. "
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" Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. "
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" All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time, and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil. "
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" We do not need a text-based cinema... we need an image-based cinema. "
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" I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium. "
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Curious
Always
" I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you. "
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" All religions have always hated females. "
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All Religions
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" We have more than enough deodorised, over-the-top, sentimental cinema. Let's try to bring a little human intelligence into things. It can be very rewarding. "
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" I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound. "
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" Religion is there to say, 'Hey, you don't have to worry - there's an afterlife.' "
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