Vertical Features Remake (1978)

Peter Greenaway’s early short concerns (in faux-documentary style with narration) a gaggle of intellectuals reconstructing a film based on fragmentary footage and virtually incomprehensible notes left by Tulse Luper about vertical objects in a small area of countryside (telephones, poles, fences, chimneys, trees, more trees, onion stalks, etc). An attack (according to Greenaway) on the pervasive structuralism in experimental film of his day. A playful parody of avant-garde theorising, academics argue about the work of Tulse Luper, Greenaway's best known and recurring fictional character, who is also featured in his new trilogy The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003), screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival