hello and welcome to our t. i'm karen tara and she and means our top headlines syria's armed rebels are all named defensive in the commercial capital aleppo but helps on the way as they're promised fresh multimillion dollar support from britain this as the u.s. reportedly ready to replace kofi annan on syria on point with another veteran diplomat and. while the u.s. and its allies seek a new ways to pressure damascus outside the frame where the u.s. hellery clinton is in turkey for talks as both countries seek out more loopholes to funnel support to the armed rebels and syria. and

a major israeli newspaper says televisa could strike iran as soon as november after failing to convince the u.s. that sanctions and diplomacy are not working washington says all options are on the table including force but has warned israel not to act unilaterally. up next renowned british art house filmmaker prayed peter greenaway tells us why you think cinema is dead. hello again the welcome to spotlight the interview show on artsy albert nobbs and

today my guest is peter green. the youngest of our cinema has nonetheless had a rich and eventful list headed still undergoing rapper transformation. so much that some artists and critics suggest it's no more the good old motion pictures with. the legendary british filmmaker peter bring like it is a living contradiction he believes cinema as done right but continues to work on his new movie does that mean there is something off the bat mr greenwood may know it's. peter greenaway he's best known as a british filmmaker and director of some most important contemporary movies but he doesn't feel entirely a director has tried many different occupations like painting writing and v.j. and he defines himself as a hybrid or an image maker or the person who translates ideas into visual terms

a few years ago peter greenaway bird cinema saying it had long been dead particularly he died in nine hundred eighty three after the remote controls up or has been invented since then greenway says cinema has to be interactive multimedia art. thank you very much for being with us tonight as well as this phrase of yours about the dead. of the cinema i think that has been asked every time you give in the end the interview this is this is what people start and maybe when they finish with so that let's let's stick to that tradition why do you think that thirty years on most of the people still believe it was a lie what did they listen to the world i've been trying to say these things i suppose ever since the beginnings of my disenchantment with this curious phenomenon called cinema probably in the early nineties but i do think that i've seen over the

last twenty years more and more and more people agreeing with me there is of course a huge nostalgia for what used to be called i suppose the seventh art but i think it's primarily for our fathers and our forefathers basically cinema all over the world was created as a cheap form of dumbed down into tame for the proletariat i don't know dare speak for russia but the proletariats now disappeared from western europe bush one hour so we need new things to remember what lenin said for us the most important arts are cinema and the circus well there's a connection there isn't a cinema came out of the circus of the variety show maybe you ought to go back there again but i think you know the obvious reasons again i can't really profoundly talk about russia but all over the west you know cinemas have been closing closing closing turning into bowling alleys whatever else and i think you know people's people's habits for entertainment become much more pluralistic there

are far more things to do than just concentrate on going to the cinema and i think that you know all the contemporary digital revolution phenomena like the social media mean that a lot of people are watching screens but they're not watching screens in so my doc to them is absent them and i think the statistic for holland is that the average dutch citizen probably only goes to the cinema once in two years that doesn't sound to me to be very healthy for the summer. if when you live in them studio and you do need sin and you can you just look out of the window your switch of the light in your room a look out of the wind early was. the red light district to kill us and you often think about this. i made a movie not so ago called prosperous books and it was the most profound line said by the character prosper he said and now let my every third thought be of the grave or i don't walk around carrying a skull and sleeping in a coffin but it's my next great adventure. what do you know about this you know

what i think there are only two subject matters and i'm sure you could agree one is sex in the others death their greeks have a good way of saying it they refer to the infinite us the very very beginning and the very very end and that's all the unless your name is salvador dali i don't think you can claim to be really sentience really around at the moment of your conception and i think perhaps the moment of death you know the banishing point and how can we understand what that vanishing points about you know about sex suggested there was a third subject matter which was money but i think money's only really coming back to sex and death he wanted to avoid one and pay for the other shakespeare suggested maybe and maybe he was thinking of russia that the big subject matter is power but our power i'm quite sure is only a way to negotiate our way again around sex and england in shakespeare's times was more like russia than russia today so probably he was thinking of england when he was writing. what i mean i think you know whether you're a nun or

a serial killer we're all deeply deeply fascinated by sex it's a perennial subject matter which deeply intrigues us and i think a good job too otherwise you and i would not be here but you can investigate sex well you can't investigate what is supposed to be the new pornographic from tears and again i don't know what your attitude again in here in russia areas but there's a way people try and tidy it away we're all very much aware that it's a. the difficult for example to have a good death you think you're going to have a good death and what does that mean does that mean you just told me you have a wife and a child will you be in the bosom of your family when you die or will you be in a nursing home or will you be thrown out to rot somewhere like society basically throws most of its old people my grandmother who literally raised me she knew two things first of all she said the communist propaganda is telling me that a good death is like is like a live man carrying a flag in your hands and being shot in the battle she said no for me

a good death she said is during sleep i want to go to sleep having good thoughts have been prepared to guard and like me that this is what she considered to be or a you know what i was thinking i would say what a great blessing as a dying is you never know when it's going to happen but i think that's a good thing about though no i think it's a curse because if we all knew when we were going to die we might live a lot better no it was awful i think so would you do you think you'd leave live a normal i think feeney's well you know what i do on the third so yes i really don't ok ok well two thousand i was happy birthday today's your birthday here's the injection and i think there is a way what is it seven billion people in the world far too many people and i don't think anybody after eighteen makes any contribution to civilization ok you might be a grandad rocking the rocking chair but that's hardly you know giving and civilization anything back so i think you know with seven billion people behind you you want to move out of the way and create space for somebody else just heard to me

that my grandmother may be may have been the only person who knew more than they knew this so what she also used to say is oh i thought maybe ugly death is always ugly do you believe that i don't i mean let me ask you a question what do you think of the world before you existed there's a big blank empty space for millions of years before you ever came into the television studio is that any different from the millions of years in the league. just after you've gone i strongly believe that nothing ever have happened before i existed and nothing will live on the world as i've done found peace of russian arrogance yes i like it to be to be this way because i have no proof and i will never get any proof that there will be something after me that's why i ask you is that something else is there are you saying you don't know what you know basically you know i'm not going to behave like pascal and edge my bets but i sincerely believe nothing no i am indeed a very twenty first century atheist and i believe that's it we will talk about

atheism about just getting back getting back to now questions like death and sacks used to largely hardly but i'll go your way but you said a lot about that already if you read them what's number one the death. sentence is sex has to be creation procreation you have all the chicken in the question i have i have four children six grandchildren i'm a profound elwyn in est i think we're here to fuck and pass on crosses racial you know whether you're a zebra a fleer a mosquito a human being the continuity is important and we're all of us just suitcases for containing the genetic material so i think our main purpose is to make sure we're part of that continuity well another quote another quote quote for from peter greenway when journalists runs out of questions the star quality starts quit putting these interview every medium has to be redeveloped otherwise we would still be looking at cave paintings new electronic filmmaking means the potential

for expanding the notions of cinema and has become very rich indeed and quote that that was peter green right how do you see the cinema of the twenty first century which which media will use i mean well i think you're going to. have it is dying we're coming to the end. of. or habit people just don't go to the cinema anymore but i do think we're in the age of the screen so evidently that's where we are in television studio so there will be a normal six panshin of what we could score cinema outside of cinema you know they say a definition of existence now is being on film if you're not on film you don't exist so i think the continuation of everything has to do with amazing digital revolution world profoundly excited stimulate you know there's something in the human psyche that demands an audio visual splendor ancient greeks had

a way of doing it the romans did many evil church did them for three hundred fifty years there was the opera opera died in one nine hundred fourteen when the cinema took over so there's always a new medium picks up where the last one left off and i know you i think there's a confusion here in some sloppy thinking there are six major forms of entertainment which were probably invented by the samir eons a long time for greece and they've always stayed with us military take my favorite one which is painting all i have to do take a look grease on the side of my nose make a mark on the table i'm making a painting very very simple technology just think how complicated is the technology for example of this film studio and indeed any film studio of the last hundred seventeen years if i pull the plug out goes it disappears but i can go on taking the grease from the side of my nose and making marks for ever and ever and ever and i believe the very first significant market were made by man was a painting when civilization goes down the tubes as it surely will the last march will also be a painting. making money. is sharing information to you but you do it like that

text you know text is different from image an image is not a text text not an image and i think you know if you believe the cinema was invented in one thousand nine hundred five then there's a way that in the one hundred seventeen years since then we have been basing cinema on the notions of text you have never seen a film that did not stop. life with the text one of the big subject matters recently would be things like the rings and harry potter he told us he's illustrated books but you could say the same for elma dover last one tree or whoever your hero is so we have a tech space and i think that's very sad says peter greenaway film director spotlight will be back shortly after we take a break so stay with us we'll continue this interview in the.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't. charge the big picture.

welcome back to spotlight we're not even just to remind them i guess you're on the show is peter greenaway though well known film director and as it turns out he turns out to be a very interesting person since not if you did thank you very much once again for coming well you know where we are having that little chat before this program you said that democracy is that well i'm not surprised you saying that because most of the filmmakers are very to tell a time when well i think you two are you two are pretty to tell a terrorist and as a film director well you know there's a reason you hate democracy i don't hate democracy you know winston churchill famously said it's a deeply imperfect system but it's the best we've got so far but it does seem to be evidence doesn't they're all over the place if you watch for example the republican

bid to become. see of america and we can see most of the debates held basically as regards for money for votes in the situation of commercialization of trying to promote propaganda which is very much based on how much money you've got in the bank and i suppose belgium recently didn't have a government for eighteen months holland at the moment where i live doesn't have a government and you can see all this struggling to make a sensible consideration of where the euro is it just takes too long for people to make their minds up. you know the notion is that ideas you know need to be attacked immediately in a sort of the same afternoon that they happen and we've seen the disappointments of the arab spring for example we seem to be circling right back to where we began again socrates was forced to take poison in three hundred b.c. because he was against notions of democracy because he said quite rightly you can

only have a satisfactory democracy if the electorate is knowing knowledgeable and intelligent and it's very very difficult to satisfy that necessity so democracy is good for the you'll eat i was in so that should have is why i don't know american democracy two hundred years ago when there was democracy for the whites and all the rest no no no i don't know right now i think you're making everyone leave the state by associating education with elite you already sound like a victorian or not a member of the twenty first century. is democracy anyway the right i am asking as a film director and as a person is thinking about democracy is democracy the right way to do to do things to make something worthwhile well in my of my worry is if i'm going to complain about democracy what on earth are we going to put in its place we don't want to return to monarchy we don't want any sort of totalitarian supremacy here when the only answer really round this conundrum is to make sure our education

systems are more profound more approachable to everybody and to continually produce not only simply you know the for our educational process but to teach citizenship the notion of being a responsible citizen and making a contribution you know to this extraordinary phenomenon we have of civilization civilization works despite all the inadequacies despite all the injustices there are seven billion people on earth again profound darwinists there would not be seven billion people on earth if civilization did not work. no many people worry are very much worried about the fact that in the so-called civilized countries the including russia by the way in the governments seem to be trying to destroy the system of higher education is it true and why why they do you know it's a bit like the roman catholic church and their argument with galileo knowledge is bad for those who greedily want to hang on to power you know there's one man on

earth now nelson mandela extraordinary he spent years and years in prison being deeply deeply persecuted he comes free he develops a situation where he becomes president of south africa then after his term is up he relinquishes power it's impossible isn't it almost now in the world. we think you know countries in south america as well as russia for people to be able to be profound enough to be mature enough to give up power. a maybe that's way we ought to organize if we are going to continue notions of democracy to try and proselytize that essential truth so when somebody says power to the people he should meet education i think that you know it's an old old argument and it was talked about by rousseau and pascal you know before the french revolution but again you know you've got to have to find out because in a sense that all may be education is subjective anyway so if you're going to have

an educational system we must make sure profoundly works very good aged person he comes to realising that neither money nor power to make you happy i don't know do you want to be happy is it important for you to be happy yes and how do you think you will be i don't know making a good death might be one thing maybe. then maybe maybe this is this is why me and you are thinking about them because as you know you know you and i will add you to disillusion with the cinema a long time ago i would say he is in charge of this in chandler i got disenchanted with television law but we both continue do it in to do what we're doing well you know all about all the most insane people forgot that that that makes sense ask each other is this something that there should be something to make us out to listen i have a confession to make i love watching your movies i agree there masterpieces but i'm not getting your message and i do really understand today after time talking to you

for twenty minutes i got more than i got from all of your films that's my confession but i suspect that ninety percent of my fellow viewers feel the same but they will never admit that because because watching peter greenaway in talking about peter greenaway is like belonging to the elite you know so aren't you the greatest creator of hypocrisy of this planet and one of the what we talk about education and all forms of sophisticated culture are elitist you know just because you've got eyes doesn't mean to say you can see you have to be trained to see just as you've been trained to speak in russian syllable was meant to be the last only tested will tell you that a lot of vets and liberal know it was worth this of but in all the best really best i suppose notions of culture have always have to be the question of training and we

have to provide the ways and means that that training can absolutely happen you didn't fall out of the womb learning how to speak russian and you certainly took a long time probably seven or eight years learning how to write it and these things have to be part of a process and in the old days i suppose right up to the beginning of the twentieth century. most people in the world were illiterate and i suppose what we've seen in the last century the ability now for people all over the world across all the language barriers to be here and to be able to communicate through this phenomenon called the first gothenburg revolution the creation the printing press our lot of people will argue the digital revolution now is the second guttenberg revolution and for me that's a way of making us all visually literate because i sincerely and i'm looking at you and imagining you two are visually illiterate. and remain religious without being hypocritical you started talking about religion thinking and speaking about religion this is important to you also what i mean is when i

read your critical remarks about the church about the clergy i get a feeling that the that you are you are trying to reject the hypocrisy of it not the you know not the faith in my right world very boldly and arrogantly i will say i have more religion in my little finger than the pope but that doesn't mean to say i have any trouble whatsoever with notions of christianity which i think has been a most amazingly entertaining in a lab or mythology but it's about ology i think in the old testament it says and then god made man in his own image whereas exactly the opposite is true but i think the vatican now for example has given up on europe is now concentrating on those countries where mythology is still possible which would be africa and south america and i think we're seeing the garage fall slow demise of christianity all over the world and i'm hoping that the other religions will follow suit. when you say think of your is in the poem i. certainly thought about john lennon saying that we're

more important in jesus christ do you think he was right there were deals more important than jesus well you know i think you know the great two figures of antiquity are jesus christ and alexander the great they both died at the age of thirty three saint augustine said we all. go to heaven aged thirty three so that's significant but i think you know alexander the great and jesus christ the really the same man alexander came with the sword and jesus christ could only come with a kiss so if we all have you know i love that one so we can sin now because actually we know you know really well you know there was in the medieval period there was a great problem people would come to st and boston who was obviously a teacher of the church and said look there's not much point me going to heaven if i'm in a diaper and i'm shitting my nappy and it's not much point me going if i'm leaning on a stick i'm not going to enjoy myself so people are very troubled about this st augustine came up with a theory that everybody should go to heaven indeed at the same time as christ died

on the cross aged thirty three but if you think about it that's quite profound thirty three are still young enough not to be too cynical and you've probably got all your facilities and you can still run a marathon so there's a way your you know you're beyond the age of promise but you're not really i suppose approaching your sinhala tea and dotage ideally it'd mean i've got about fifty questions that my research is really wrote for me to ask you know they're pretty good ones among them haven't started one of them you hate the camera seeing that it can't think so how come you get the best photographers to work for it. well you know i think there are four tyrannies you asked me at the beginning of this interview why i think cinema was dying and i can tell you all these things about cinema from the outside are declining audiences asserter but i think cinemas destroying itself from it in that because first of all it's a text based medium cinema knows this way always goes back to the bookshop and i

think we have to get rid of the notion of text in cinemas to really number one surely number two. a cinema works with a frame we are now in a frame here frame is totally artificial there's no equivalent whatsoever in nature when i look at you i don't see you in a frame when you look at me you don't see me in a frame it's much more so. sedating complicated you know that my work is what i want my work your thing done no no i've always said that to my students our work is to widen the view beyond that for a while noting that you've got to multiply the many famously god said when you go to the cinema two thirds of the world behind your head because you're only looking in one direction how on earth can that be a representation of life very very miserably he also said you know we go to the cinema in the dark you know what the hell are you doing in the dark manson or nocturnal animals so we have to explode that idea my third terrenate would be you know we have to change the position of the actor in the cinema the cinema is not a playground for sharon stone it is a lot matt that's not because of sharon stone it's because the way we use her and

then again coming to your question maybe the last one is tyranny of the camera the camera is a very very stupid object it's only memetic it'll only reproduce what you put in front of it and therefore it can hardly be very creative peter green very own thirty minutes is definitely not his for a minute peter i'm sorry but we're going to have time to i'm sorry that that bad has problems to share it with people like you thanks very much for being with us and just to remind you that film director peter greenberg was my guest that's it for now but must be back with more. on what's going on in ten outside russia until then stay in the party and take a. thank you. world with. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia

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