This film is currently unavailable

The Falls
Peter Greenaway's epic first feature, constructed as an excerpt from an imagined, filmic directory listing everyone affected by VUE – the Violent Unknown Event
Director: Peter Greenaway
Overview
Following a series of inventive shorts, Peter Greenaway arrived fully formed as a feature filmmaker with this highly confident, audacious epic.
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

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
Animation & Artists Moving Image 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.

Fata Morgana Fata Morgana
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1971 76 mins Director: Werner Herzog
Herzog’s intense, dreamlike mediation on desert life as if seen by an alien.

Nightwatching Nightwatching
Biopic 2010 136 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
Martin Freeman’s hearty turn as Rembrandt anchors one of Peter Greenaway’s most accessible films, charting the creation of the Dutch master’s key work, ‘The Night Watch’.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Biopic 2015 106 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
One of Britain’s most inventive filmmakers, Peter Greenaway, tackles the story of arguably the most influential filmmaker in cinema history, Sergei Eisenstein.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.

Birthday Girl Birthday Girl
Drama 2023 95 mins Director: Michael Noer
Heart-pounding Danish drama about a mother’s desperate attempts to unmask her daughter’s attacker on board a cruise ship.

Let the Right One In Let the Right One In
Horror 2008 115 mins Director: Tomas Alfredson
A twelve-year-old boy befriends a mysterious girl with a dark secret, in Tomas Alfredson’s grownup tale of childhood vampirism.

Good Bye, Lenin! Good Bye, Lenin!
Drama 2003 121 mins Director: Wolfgang Becker
After his mother wakes from a coma in 1990, a young man goes to great lengths to pretend East Germany still exists in this wonderfully bittersweet tragicomedy.

Les Rendez-vous d'Anna Les Rendez-vous d'Anna
Drama 1978 128 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
A quasi self-portrait that was unfairly neglected on its release, this road movie is a profound musing on loneliness, displacement and the long shadow of the war.

Saute ma ville Saute ma ville
Drama 1968 13 mins Director: Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman’s plays a manic heroine in her early, incendiary critique of domesticity and conformity.