Peter Greenaway
The Falls
Director Peter Greenaway concentrated mainly on the short film form during his early career, and his first long-form film, the mock-documentary The Falls (1980), is effectively a series of 92 shorts comprising a three hour long feature.
Chris Auty of Time Out described it like this: “Set in a strangely serene future after a ‘Violent Unexplained Event’ which has irrevocably changed ‘Life as We Know It’, The Falls sets out to document the biographies of 92 victims of the event, all selected on the basis that their names being with the letters ‘fall’. The strategy is ingenious, substituting an amazing excess of ‘content’ for the formalism that has (usually) defined the avant-garde. For those that like riddles, sudden excursions, romantic insights and the eerie music of Michael Nyman (plus a bit of Brian Eno).”
Peter Greenaway is one of the most influential figures in British film-making. The Space is showcasing some of the early works for the Central Office of Information and the British Film Institute, which provide a glimpse of his experimental techniques and unique sense of style.