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Meet Peter Greenaway, filmmaker, painter, encyclopaedist. Daring, controversial and rarely predictable, Greenaway is celebrating his 80th birthday and marking the 40th anniversary of the release of his first feature film, The Draughtsman’s Contract.

Praised and sometimes cursed by audiences and critics from England to Japan, Russia to Mexico, Greenaway has authored a cult filmography too long to comfortably list. Feature titles include The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers, Nightwatching, A Zed and Two Noughts and The Baby of Macon. At 80 he shows little sign of slowing down with one new film due for release and another starting production.

Here Greenaway offers personal reflections on his life and career, his ideas about art and his desire to create a painter’s cinema. We also delve into Greenaway’s archive, in the company of BFI National Archive curator Josephine Botting, as the BFI prepares to screen a sweeping season of his work starting in October 2022 and the release of a special remaster of The Draughtsman’s Contract.

After 50 years of filmmaking what drives the lush and idiosyncratic vision of one of European cinema’s most startling auteurs?

Producer: Michael Umney
Executive Producer: Susan Marling

A Just Radio production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4 in association with the BFI’s Frames of Mind – The Films of Peter Greenaway season.

With special thanks to KinoFilmpodium, Zurich for their permission to use extracts from Peter Greenaway’s lectures. The full lectures are available at filmpodium.ch

Image courtesy of Steve Pyke/Getty Images