This film is currently unavailable

The Falls
Following a series of inventive shorts, Peter Greenaway arrived fully formed as a feature filmmaker with this highly confident, audacious epic.
Director: Peter Greenaway
Overview
Peter Greenaway's epic first feature, constructed as an excerpt from an imagined, filmic directory listing everyone affected by VUE – the Violent Unknown Event
A mockumentary of sorts, it’s constructed as an excerpt from an imagined, filmic directory listing everyone affected by VUE – the Violent Unknown Event – a mysterious apocalyptic occurrence that has left a substantial section of the British public speaking bizarre, invented languages, dreaming of water and identifying themselves with birds. The excerpt in question concerns everyone whose surname begins with ‘Fall’, hence the title. In description the film may sound like a dry (and somewhat foreboding – at over three hours) exercise, but in fact Greenaway’s film is an unconventional delight. Its series of extremely surreal biographies describe characters with unnerving obsessions and fantastical afflictions, all conveyed in Greenaway’s distinct, deadpan absurdist poetry. The two overriding themes are ornithology and geography, and Greenaway’s preoccupation with place prefigures the psychogeographic filmmaking of Patrick Keiller and Iain Sinclair. Keen observers of Greenaway’s work will find obscure references to many of his future films, including a first appearance for the ubiquitous Tulse Luper, but the film’s endlessly quotable dialogue can be admired by anyone: (“"She was a waterfall on legs"; “Most of them had turned into penguins”; “Her body reabsorbed her breasts”.)
Related

Ghost in the Shell Ghost in the Shell
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1995 83 mins Director: Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii's beautifully animated and disturbingly prophetic anime classic about the hunt for a supreme hacker in a transhumanist dystopia.

Watership Down Watership Down
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1978 92 mins Director: Martin Rosen
An apocalyptic vision pushes a group of rabbits to abandon their warren in search of a new home, in this landmark British animation.

Requiem for a Village Requiem for a Village
Documentary 1975 68 mins Director: David Gladwell
The idyllic, pastoral past of a Suffolk village is reborn through memory in this extraordinary, little-known film from director David Gladwell.

Un Chien Andalou Un Chien Andalou
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1928 16 mins Silent Director: Luis Buñuel
A scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism - Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first film is a classic of Surrealist cinema.

Eden and After Eden and After
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1969 98 mins Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.

Gallivant Gallivant
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1997 100 mins Director: Andrew Kötting
Andrew Kötting takes a terrific, twisting coastal tour of the UK with his family.

Computer Chess Computer Chess
Comedy 2013 91 mins Director: Andrew Bujalski
Andrew Bujalski’s hilarious and surreal comedy about the birth of computer culture, set in an early 1980s conference where primitive programmers take on chess masters.

Whisky Galore! Whisky Galore!
Comedy 1949 83 mins Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Ealing's thirstiest comedy: "the longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens"?

Dogtooth Dogtooth
Drama 2009 93 mins Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Yorgos Lanthimos' scary, witty tale of a dysfunctional Greek family is original, ingenious and sadly relevant as a study of parent-child relationships

Unrelated Unrelated
Drama 2008 96 mins Director: Joanna Hogg
On a Tuscan break a fortysomething woman finds herself drawn to the company of a group of partying teens, including a young Tom Hiddleston.

Amour Fou Amour Fou
Period drama 2014 92 mins Director: Jessica Hausner
Jessica Hausner’s long-awaited follow-up to Lourdes is a devilish anti-Rom-Com in which a German poet seeks mates for a suicide pact.

La Grande Bouffe La Grande Bouffe
Comedy 1973 130 mins Director: Marco Ferreri
Marco Ferreri's provocative and controversial satire about four friends who retreat to a country mansion with the intention of eating themselves to death.

The Draughtsman's Contract The Draughtsman's Contract
Period drama 1982 107 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway became a director of international status with this witty, stylised, erotic country house murder mystery.

A Zed and Two Noughts A Zed and Two Noughts
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1985 117 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
Following a fatal car crash involving a swan outside a zoo, twin-brother zoologists Oliver and Oswald become fascinated by the processes of decay.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company Goltzius and the Pelican Company
Biopic 2012 117 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
An artist stages a series of erotic dramatisations illustrating sexual taboos from the Old Testament, in this startling and shocking return from director Peter Greenaway.

Santosh Santosh
Drama 2023 128 mins Director: Sandhya Suri
A housewife-turned-cop is sucked into a high-profile case that has polarised the local community in this taut, north India-set thriller.

Night Games Night Games
Drama 1966 105 mins Director: Mai Zetterling
In Mai Zetterling’s scathing rebuke of European entitlement, a man returns to his childhood home and confronts his repressed memories and desire.

Loving Couples Loving Couples
Drama 1964 118 mins Director: Mai Zetterling
Three expectant mothers on a maternity ward recall their personal and sexual experiences in Mai Zetterling’s bold, subversive debut.

The Girls The Girls
Drama 1968 100 mins Director: Mai Zetterling
Three stage actresses starring in Aristophanes’ classic play Lysistrata start to draw parallels with their own lives in Mai Zetterling’s feminist comedy.

The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael
Thriller 2006 94 mins Director: Thomas Clay
Thomas Clay’s unflinching story of teen drugs and violence scandalised the British film industry 20 years ago, but is arguably ripe for rehabilitation

Pacifiction Pacifiction
Drama 2022 165 mins Director: Albert Serra
Albert Serra’s hypnotic Palme d'Or-nominated drama about the greed and hypocrisy of colonial power in Tahiti.