27 01. 08 This place never ceases to surprise me. Last Friday I had to go to the mairie for some information and,whilst waiting for the lady to get off the phone, picked up the local newsletter only to discover that we had a film festival this weekend. It was billed as a festival celebrating the relationship between film and architecture and the special guest was Peter Greenaway. As a long time fan of Mr Greenaway’s work I was delighted, so duly turned up to the round table discussion on Saturday afternoon. This was mainly conducted in English (not sure what the Clermontais thought of this) with Mr Greenaway passionately declaring that since the invention of the remote, cinema as we know it was dead. All of which didn’t seem to have a lot to do with architecture but was very interesting. In the evening there was an advance screening of his film on Rembrandt entitled Nightwatching, a fictionalised bio of the painter based on his famous painting The Nightwatch. Fascinating movie with the usual Greenaway trademarks of a certain exuberant bawdiness and wonderful painterly lighting and colours. Worth seeing.
