Eisenstein in Guanajuato on Dutch Television February 17 / by Saskia Boddeke & Peter Greenaway Projects

Still from:
Eisenstein in Guanajuato by Peter Greenaway

17 February 2017 23.00 NPO 2 VPRO

 

In 1931, the great Russian Soviet film-maker, Sergei Eisenstein, travelled to Mexico to makea film to be called Que Viva Mexico. Staying for ten days in the Mexican town of Guanajuato ostensibly to visit its famous Museum of the Dead, he falls in love with his Mexican guide, Palomino Canedo, and, paraphrasing the Jack Reed sentence about the St Petersburg Russian Revolution being “Ten Days that Shook the World”, for Eisenstein, the time he spent in Guanajuato were “Ten Days That Shook Eisenstein”. Here are those ten days in a film written and directed by Peter Greenaway, premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.