Film master classes by Greenaway and Makhmalbaf

Mohsen Makhmalbaf (right)     

I doubt whether or not the famously controversial, in-­your-face Peter Greenaway would have a very long conversation with idealist and humanist filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The common ground would be narrow, but think of the differences! What sheer joy it would be to witness the interaction between these two most extraordinary individuals and renaissance men. The unashamedly art elitist, and very funny Englishman, Peter Greenaway is a painter turned auteur who is also a VJ and installation artist. Much to his credit, he’s a highly vocal proponent of change and revolution in cinema, who wants filmmakers to either create a new visual language for film as art, or to simply move on.
Credit is also due to Iran’s Makhmalbaf as a dedicated artist and a writer to boot, who is committed to championing the oppressed. A one-time child street pedlar who also believes in political and cultural revolution, he’s an egalitarian who educated himself in prison before becoming a filmmaker on the coattails of his revolutionary credentials. He quickly evolved into a fierce critic of the Iranian government, fleeing his homeland and then surviving four assassination attacks from Teheran.

Peter Greenaway

The two multi-award winning directors who are currently in Hong Kong to promote their latest films revealed very different attitudes to life and the execution of filmmaking in interviews with MDT. Greenaway is preoccupied with the idea of reinvention, the Seventh Art, cinema, and never losing his painter’s eye while seeking to broaden his audience without sacrificing artistic principles. Makhmalbaf is also genuinely preoccupied with artistic integrity and reinvention but with a deeply contrasting modus operandi and perception of cinema’s objectives.
Greenaway is most well-known for “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” a lavishly-textured, ingenious dark comedy ending in Cannibalistic revenge.  However, that may soon change with his latest film.  This film is one of a string of other art-knowledge-based films that have made it to the mainstream. Makhmalbaf is best known for his Cannes Film Festival winner, “Kandahar”. I spoke to these two directors, who are special guests of this year’s “Master Class” at Hong Kong International Film Festival; the other special guest, Portugal’s Pedro Costa, declined to be interviewed.  The two directors revealed significant details about their different approaches to cinema by discussing their understanding of the term “means” when used in the expression “means to an end”.
Here’s Makhmalbaf: “Cinema is a means to an end, not the end itself. My films are (intended) to change culture and through that, to change lives, and through their lives, to change society. I make films to support (cultural) differences, to support humanity, and also to reduce the suffering of my audience. Capitalism has destroyed many things, not in terms of economy but only in terms of culture”, he declares, bemoaning the uniformity that it brings. “Same airports, and restaurants, same dress, same language. We lost our differences (which) were our richnesses. We became poor in this condition”.
In contrast, Greenaway contends that “cinema is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I hope I can understand [filmmakers who push] political and social [agendas]. I hope I can sympathize but film festivals like the last one in Germany have now become a sort of ‘Amnesty International.’ You give prizes to those people who are disenfranchised in some way; either those whose wives or children are in jail or those who’ve only got one leg or one arm. Should we be using cinema for those particular reasons?”

The President

Yet in spite of their differences, when the subject of the hijacking and demeaning of cinema by big money comes up, there’s a surprising degree of agreement. Greenaway again: “I don’t think Hollywood is really about cinema; it’s about making money. American cinema is there to proselytize the notion of capitalism. Maybe the two worst things in the world recently are Hollywood and Soviet Realism; committee-made films which are organized propaganda in disguise”.
Compare this to Makhmalbaf: “With blockbuster films, they spend a lot of money, use every source of technology and say nothing”. He labels this a “cheap” approach; explaining this further by saying “it’s MacDonaldism in art, supporting violence, it’s not about culture. We should talk about the big issues that involve human beings. We should talk about poverty and loneliness”.
With their lofty thoughts, ideals of social justice, and cultural diversity on Makhmalbaf’s side, and with the advancement of cinema as a definitive separate art on Greenaway’s side, do they ever come down to Earth and find work-life balance? Yes, they do, especially when it comes to family. Both have drawn their families into their fields of work and both work with their spouses.
While Greenaway’s two eldest children have become artists — one a sculptor, the other a jeweler by “osmosis” — Makhmalbaf has gravitated towards the world of filmmaking not only for his wife but also his three children, who are all film directors.  They collaborate in various production roles in each other’s films. For example in his latest film “The President”, his wife co-wrote the script, his son was the designer and a producer, one daughter trained the five-year old child co-star actor and his other daughter edited the film. The fact that they work together professionally helps the family stay close on a personal level.
Greenaway regularly prepares art exhibitions with his opera director Dutch wife. “So there’s a way we often find the opportunity to work together. This immediately removes the hard-edged responsibility, since we both understand what we are having is quality time. She completes her own projects…I make my feature films entirely on my own but there are opportunities for us to communicate.”

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

But despite some common themes in these two men’s lives, their paths could hardly have been more different. One came from a solidly middle-class English background, the son of an ornithologist, who spent his childhood following his father around in marshes in search of elusive rare birds. The other was the son of an impoverished, divorced and unsupported mother in Iran who was forced out on the street as a hawker to feed the family at just twelve years old.
At a glance, it seems that neither upbringing would have surely led to their current lives as filmmakers, but they have done and the world is certainly a richer place for it. By Robert Carroll, Hong Kong

Reviews | Greenaway, Makhmalbaf depart from previous works

The Amsterdam-based English auteur, Peter Greenaway is back with a witty and highly creative homage to one of the main founders of modern cinema, with the film “Eisenstein In Guanajuato” debuting in Berlin. Having received a nomination for the Golden Bear, this critically acclaimed film is superbly cast with scenes of unique playfulness that rethink the rules of cinema.
To understand Greenaway is to peel away the layers of an artist’s knowledge and technical skills of one of the great masters of the “Seventh Art” as Canudo described cinema in the early 20th century. “He quotes his technical knowledge at ease with his ideas” says Hong Kong and Macau based artist Konstantin Bessmertny who thinks Greenaway’s films display “an unprecedented level of visual sophistication to be an equivalent of ‘perfect pitch’ in music. Any still from his movies is a complete work of art”.
Set in Mexico in 1931, the film traces “ten days that shook Eisenstein” as the protagonist describes his formative affair with his gay lover. Lavish sets which remain true to Greenaway’s aesthetic style create beautiful mise-en-scenes, challenging the norms and limits of contemporary cinematography. The warmth with which the director portrays his declared idol comes across powerfully as Eisenstein becomes much more human than any previous portrayal of him. At once it is a triumph of sexual, emotional and cultural discovery for Eisenstein, and a tragedy as his dreams of making films in Hollywood and then Mexico collapse. Sex and death are recurring themes, with Greenaway portrayed in the City of the Dead Guanajuato.
In Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s latest film, which opened the last Venice Festival, “The President”, he successfully seeks the audience’s sympathy for an unlikeable, deposed dictator on the run with his five year-old grandson and would-be heir. The film begins with a captivating example of the absurdity of out-of-touch power. The ageing President impresses his grandson by allowing him full control over the city’s lights. The stunt backfires the second time, when the lights fail to operate, triggering a revolution to overthrew the hated despot. Even as events rapidly spiral out of control, his daughters and wife bicker over past resentments while seated in the presidential limousine, remaining oblivious to the surrounding mobs. The President drops them off at the airport, ignoring the ever-increasing danger.
Suddenly abandoned by his allies, the now deposed leader goes on the run with his grandson. A number of close shaves saved by clever thinking culminate in a thoroughly engrossing denouement.
Both films are a departure from their creators’ previous works and more accessible and entertaining than many of their predecessors.  This should bode well for both in terms of audience figures. Robert Carroll, Hong Kong