THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT

UK, 1982, COLOR, DCP, 104’, ENGLISH

In his feature-length narrative debut (and first iconic encounter with composer Michael Nyman), Greenaway invites us to a country manor of 17th-century England where he makes us complicit in an eccentric arrangement between a married aristocrat and an arrogant young artist. She commissions him to produce a series of drawings of her luxurious home and he agrees in return for eight pounds for each painting, accompanied by her sexual services. Inaugurating a decade emblematic of his sui generis contribution to British cinema, the filmmaker delivers a sardonic, erotic and wholly unconventional coupling of period drama and murder mystery, destined to stimulate the senses and the mind in equal measure, haunted by the indefinable feeling that every visually flawless shot hides an enigma.

DIRECTOR: Peter Greenaway
SCREENWRITER: Peter Greenaway
DoP: Curtis Clark
MUSIC: Michael Nyman
EDITOR: John Wilson
PRINCIPAL CAST: Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman, Anne-Louise Lambert, Hugh Fraser

PETER GREENAWAY
English filmmaker and artist, born in 1942. Artistically solitary figure of British cinema to which he was a glorious part of especially during the ‘80s with a series of impressive, idiosyncratic films. His interest in painting and nouvelle vague triggered his work with the former informing his multimedia projects and video installations work to this day.

FILMOGRAPHY ( SELECTED)
2007 Nightwatching
1999 8 ½ Women
1989 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
1987 The Belly of the Architect
1982 The Draughtsman’s Contract