The main aim of this article is to present the links between two disciplines in the humanities: film studies and cultural anthropology. In addition, the authoress also analyzes Peter Greenaway's film 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover' in an anthropological context. This film can be seen as presenting time and space in a symbolic way as that of holiday and feast. As a result, we are dealing with a ritual depiction. In a cultural sense, this unusual time and space are sacred. Greenaway's film can be seen not only through the depiction of carnival, as typified by a jolly masquerade, sexual promiscuity, too much to eat and drink and anarchy, but also through the important figure of the jester who plays the main role during that holiday. This method of studying the film structures makes it possible to perceive the cinematographic depiction in a new context and helps explain traditional signs and symbols, similar to those shown in Greenaway's unusual picture.
Peter Greenaway's film-making, discussed within the context of British cinema, reveals a number of features that have led British critics and film makers to reject his work.The author uses the example of Greenaway's latest films to examine their aesthetics in the paradigm of mise-en-page aesthetics, understood as a variant of surface aesthetics. The adoption of this assumption makes him discuss its individual features as: 'active surface aesthetics', the aesthetics of writing (or calligraphy) and Windows aesthetics. The conceptions show the features of Greenaway's latest films: use of TV pictures and video, morphing as the governing principle of the organisation of visual space, encrustation of writing and the texture of paintings to frames and their visual structure of hypertext. Author's conclusion is that the aesthetics of Greenaway's latest films turns out to be the aesthetics of allegory.
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