# Peter Greenaway
**Peter Greenaway** (born 1942 in [Newport, Wales](https://www.edgepedia.org/newport-wales)) is a British film director, screenwriter and painter whose features, including *[The Draughtsman's Contract](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-draughtsmans-contract)* (1982), *The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover* (1989), and *[Prospero's Books](https://www.edgepedia.org/prosperos-books)* (1991), set immaculately composed images within predetermined structures of numbers, letters and sequences rather than conventional plots. Trained as a painter, he has also produced gallery installations, television works, CD-ROMs and opera libretti, and he has stated that "cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be left to the storyteller".[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) • [2](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2022-12-09-peter-greenaway-in-conversation.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | Newport, Gwent, Wales, 1942[2](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2022-12-09-peter-greenaway-in-conversation.pdf) • [3](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000425/bio/?mode=desktop) |
| Training | Painter; studied at Walthamstow College of Art, then film editor and director at the Central Office of Information from 1965[4](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf) • [5](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/peter-greenaway-shorts) |
| Feature debut | *The Falls* (1980), a three-hour post-apocalyptic epic comprising 92 biographies of people whose names begin with 'FALL'[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) |
| Breakthrough | *The Draughtsman's Contract* (1982), an unexpected box-office hit that made his style commercially viable[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) • [4](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf) |
| Cannes award | *Drowning by Numbers* won the 1988 Prix de la meilleure contribution artistique[6](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/p/peter-greenaway/) |
| Key collaborators | Cinematographer Sacha Vierny (from 1985) and composer Michael Nyman[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) |
| Output | More than 60 films of various gauges and purposes, plus installations and exhibitions at the Louvre, Venice's Palazzo Fortuny and other venues[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) • [8](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/) |
| Honors | BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award, 2014[8](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/) |
## Training and early work
Greenaway's ambition as an adolescent was to be a painter; he studied at Walthamstow College of Art and has said he still regards painting as "a much more venerable pursuit" than cinema.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) • [4](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf) From 1965 he edited and directed magazine-style items at the Central Office of Information, a UK government department making public information films, over roughly fifteen years for series such as *This Week in Britain*.[5](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/peter-greenaway-shorts) • [4](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf)
While working there he made self-financed shorts such as *Intervals* (1973) and *Windows* (1974), exploring obsessions with landscape, maps, diagrams, grids and systems of classification. The BFI's Production Board and the Arts Council later funded more ambitious shorts, *A Walk Through H* and *Vertical Features Remake* (both 1978), after the BFI production head Peter Sainsbury backed him; *A Walk Through H* he described as a turning point.[5](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/peter-greenaway-shorts) • [9](https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2015/08/the-landscapes-of-film-interview-with.html) The line culminated in *The Falls* (1980), a mockumentary drawing on science fiction and the writing of [Jorge Luis Borges](https://www.edgepedia.org/jorge-luis-borges), about the victims of a fictitious "Violent Unexplained Event".[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) • [3](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000425/bio/?mode=desktop)
## The features of the 1980s
*The Draughtsman's Contract*, an 18th-century country-house mystery, turned an apparently avant-garde filmmaker into a commercial prospect: with help from the newly established [Channel 4](https://www.edgepedia.org/channel-4), bizarre and intensely personal films became perceived as commercially viable, and Greenaway "helped to change the face of British film itself".[4](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf) Through the 1980s a Greenaway film was, in the BFI's description, one of the safer British film investments.[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway)
Two collaborations defined the period. From *A Zed & Two Noughts* (1985), a tale of identical twins, snails, swans and time-lapse decay, Greenaway hired the cinematographer Sacha Vierny, who had shot [Alain Resnais](https://www.edgepedia.org/alain-resnais)' *Last Year at Marienbad* (1961), Greenaway's favorite film; for that picture Vierny devised 26 distinct types of lighting.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) • [1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) The composer [Michael Nyman](https://www.edgepedia.org/michael-nyman) matched Greenaway's images and editing rhythms with repetitive motifs drawing on English Baroque music such as [Henry Purcell](https://www.edgepedia.org/henry-purcell)'s.[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) • [7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) At Cannes, *Drowning by Numbers* (1988) received the prize for the best artistic contribution to the festival.[6](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/p/peter-greenaway/)
Each film carries an abstract conceit, in Greenaway's own account: *The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover* is "really about colour", *Drowning by Numbers* is about numeracy, and the number 92, the atomic number of uranium, recurs across his work as a token of civilization's success or failure.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway)
## After 1990
*Prospero's Books* (1991) and *The Pillow Book* (1996) turned *The Tempest* and [Sei Shōnagon](https://www.edgepedia.org/sei-shonagon)'s pillow book into layered visual feasts using then-new high-definition video technology; *Prospero's Books* also featured [John Gielgud](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-gielgud) voicing all the characters while incarnating Shakespeare's magician on screen.[10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/new%20releases/2022/11/11/greenaway-alphabet/) The reception of *[The Baby of Mâcon](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-baby-of-macon)* (1993), which combined extreme sexual violence with the absence of a Nyman score, the two had parted ways over *Prospero's Books*, was overwhelmingly negative, and many viewers stopped following his career; the features became more sporadic, sometimes barely released.[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) By then his work was as likely to appear in an art gallery or opera house as in a cinema.[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway)
The multimedia project *The Tulse Luper Suitcases* (2003 to 2004) produced three feature films accompanied by books, CD-ROMs and installations, centered on Greenaway's recurring alter ego Tulse Luper; the films were barely released.[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) Since the turn of the century he has focused on painting and on artist-centered films: *Nightwatching* (2007) on [Rembrandt](https://www.edgepedia.org/rembrandt), *Goltzius and the Pelican Company* (2012) on the Dutch engraver, *Eisenstein in Guanajuato* (2015) on the Russian director, and the later *Walking to Paris* on [Constantin Brâncuși](https://www.edgepedia.org/constantin-brancusi).[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) • [10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/new%20releases/2022/11/11/greenaway-alphabet/)
## Images against narrative
Greenaway argues that cinema has always been text-based, "every single film you've ever seen starts life with a text", and that this dependence on literature is a mistake; he calls instead for an image-based cinema modeled on painting's single encapsulated statement.[11](https://static.bafta.org/uploads_pre_202411/transcripts/bafta_a_life_in_pictures_peter_greenaway_transcript.pdf) He is not, he says, eschewing narrative entirely, which he calls "cinematically suicidal"; instead he keeps audiences engaged through systems, patterns and sequences.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway)
He is also uninterested in authenticity in his historical films, citing the magical realist novelists Jorge Luis Borges and [Gabriel García Márquez](https://www.edgepedia.org/gabriel-garcia-marquez) as heroes and asking "why let the truth get in the way of a good story?".[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) Recurring themes are sex and death, which he identifies as the twin forces of Eros and Thanatos, and he has described cinema itself as ephemeral and, as an institution, a "dying dinosaur" needing reconditioning, while insisting that the death he means is of the format, not of visual storytelling.[8](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/) • [12](https://fmkjournals.fmk.edu.rs/index.php/AM/article/view/94)
## Reception and standing
Critical opinion of Greenaway's films has ranged from outright hostility to strong praise; many critics find them cold and unemotional, and accusations of pretentiousness are met by Greenaway with the reply "pretending to what?".[13](https://thesis.ncad.ie/T1284_The%20films%20of%20Peter%20Greenaway%20a%20tissue%20of%20lies_NC00204986.pdf) • [1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway) In France, the two main film journals, *Cahiers du Cinéma* and *Positif*, have taken opposite views of his work.[14](https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=2524) In 2014 he received BAFTA's Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award, honoring work across features, non-fiction, documentary, shorts, television and gallery installations.[8](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/) He has lived in Amsterdam since around the 1990s with his wife, the artist and filmmaker Saskia Boddeke, who directed the 2017 documentary portrait *The Greenaway Alphabet*; he has said he feels European rather than English.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway) • [8](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/) • [15](https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-the-greenaway-alphabet-2017-online)
## References
1. [Michael Brooke, "Where to begin with Peter Greenaway", BFI, 31 October 2022](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-peter-greenaway)
2. ["Peter Greenaway in Conversation", BFI Southbank programme notes](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2022-12-09-peter-greenaway-in-conversation.pdf)
3. [Peter Greenaway biography, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000425/bio/?mode=desktop)
4. ["About Director Peter Greenaway", Zeitgeist Films press kit for *The Draughtsman's Contract*](https://zeitgeistfilms.com/userFiles/uploads/Press_Kits/draughtmanscontract_presskit_2022.pdf)
5. ["Peter Greenaway shorts", BFI Player](https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/peter-greenaway-shorts)
6. [Peter Greenaway, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/p/peter-greenaway/)
7. [Lillian Crawford, "In the beginning was the image: an interview with Peter Greenaway", BFI, 17 November 2022](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/beginning-was-image-interview-with-peter-greenaway)
8. ["Peter Greenaway: Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema", BAFTA, 9 February 2014](https://www.bafta.org/stories/peter-greenaway-outstanding-british-contribution-to-cinema-2014/)
9. ["The Landscapes of Film: Interview with Peter Greenaway" (1986), Critics at Large](https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2015/08/the-landscapes-of-film-interview-with.html)
10. ["The Greenaway Alphabet", BFI Southbank programme notes](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/new%20releases/2022/11/11/greenaway-alphabet/)
11. ["BAFTA A Life in Pictures: Peter Greenaway" transcript, 13 April 2016](https://static.bafta.org/uploads_pre_202411/transcripts/bafta_a_life_in_pictures_peter_greenaway_transcript.pdf)
12. [Micha Braun, "Peter Greenaway's Re-invention of Mannerist Style and the Historicity of Cinema", AM Journal of Art and Media Studies](https://fmkjournals.fmk.edu.rs/index.php/AM/article/view/94)
13. ["The Films of Peter Greenaway: a Tissue of Lies", NCAD thesis](https://thesis.ncad.ie/T1284_The%20films%20of%20Peter%20Greenaway%20a%20tissue%20of%20lies_NC00204986.pdf)
14. ["Peter Greenaway's 1991 Prospero's Books and Film Critics",*e-*Rea / Shakespeare forum](https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=2524)
15. ["Watch The Greenaway Alphabet online", BFI Player](https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-the-greenaway-alphabet-2017-online)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Screen people and creators › Film and television directors › Directors of Europe › British and Irish directors*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license