Two-and-a-half years after development was first announced and just over a year after we received some stills, here’s the first real look at Peter Greenaway‘s Eisenstein in Guanajuato. It’s arrived, naturally enough, in trailer form ahead of Wednesday’s premiere at Berlinale, and the footage — while carefully assembled and scored to some rousing music, or: exactly what distributors would like to see — is mighty encouraging, filled with images that impress on both a compositional and cinematographic level, as well as a nice peek at Elmer Bäck‘s interpretation of the Soviet legend.
Although no domestic distributor has yet been set, one hopes the reception out of Berlin encourages some movement — and, on a more basic level, that it indicates Greenaway’s mounted something equal to such immense promise. If a release isn’t so far off, it might be time for yours truly to adjust his most-anticipated-of-2015 list.
Below, take a look at both the trailer and two gorgeous posters for a film that also features Luis Alberti, Maya Zapata, Lisa Owen, Stelio Savante, Rasmus Slätis, and Jakob Öhrman:
Synopsis:
In 1931, at the height of his artistic powers, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein travels to Mexico to shoot a new film to be titled Que Viva Mexico. Freshly rejected by Hollywood and under increasing pressure to return to Stalinist Russia, Eisenstein arrives at the city of Guanajuato. Chaperoned by his guide Palomino Cañedo, he vulnerably experiences the ties between Eros and Thanatos, sex and death, happy to create their effects in cinema, troubled to suffer them in life. Peter Greenaway’s film explores the mind of a creative genius facing the desires and fears of love, sex and death through ten passionate days that helped shape the rest of the career of one of the greatest masters of Cinema.
What do you make of this first look? Has Eisenstein been on your radar?