Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway, CBE, born 5 April 1942, is prominently recognized as a British film director, screenwriter, and artist. His notable works are deeply ingrained with Renaissance and Baroque painting influences, particularly Mannerism. His films invariably feature distinct traits of scenic composition, contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, and the striking interplay of sexual pleasure and painful death. Greenaway was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. His family relocated there before his birth to escape the Blitz. After World War II, they returned to the London area, settling in Woodford. From an early age, Greenaway nourished his interest in painting and European cinema, with notable influences from films of Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alain Resnais. He embarked on his filmmaking studies in 1962, at Walthamstow College of Art and later joined the Central Office of Information, where he honed his skills for 15 years as a film editor & director. His first feature-length film was 'The Falls' (1980), and his most successful film was 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover' (1989). Currently, he resides in Amsterdam and is a professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.