Peter Greenaway plans new Death In Venice project

The film, Food For Love, is due to start principal photography in Venice on Nov 10.

It is bound to provoke comparisons with Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film of Death In Venice, starring Dirk Bogarde. However, Greenaway’s producer Kees Kasander has explained that Greenaway will be taking a very different tack to Visconti as he tells the story of the old composer obsessed with the adolescent boy.

“It’s partly shot in Venice. Most will be shot in a studio,” Kasander stated. “This film is coming closer to The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover than any (other) films we have made so far.”

Jeremy Zimmermann is currently casting the film.

The project is being structured by Kasander as as UK/Dutch/Italian coproduction through The Kasander Film Company. Kasander will be re-establishing a London-based office to facilitate the shooting of the movie.

In recent years, the Venice Lido has been extensively re-developed. The Hotel Des Bains, the setting for Mann’s novel, has been turned into luxury flats. However, Kasander says that this should not present a problem. Greenaway plans to shoot in Venice but not on the Lido itself.

Greenaway’s current project Goltzius and the Pelican Company (sold by Bankside and starring F. Murray Abraham) is in post-production and should be ready for Cannes.

Now, Kasander says, Greenaway is determined to up his productivity. “Peter is close to 70 and he wants to make at least 10 more films. For the next 10 years, that means we have to go back to one film a year.”

Other projects that Greenaway is planning to hatch include a feature about visionary painter Hieronymus Bosch and a film (to be produced by Submarine) about Russian director Sergei Eisenstein in Mexico in the 1930s called Eisenstein In Guanajuato.

“It’s an exciting line-up for Peter. In the next couple of years, we will be busy,” Kasander said.