Nightwatching
By Peter Greenaway

year:  2007

Peter Greenaway's film (writing and direction) Nightwatching is about the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.

Initiated by The Netherlands' Kasander Film Company, Nightwatching is based around the paiting of Rembrandt's most famous picture "Nightwatch".

The film's premiere (Venice, September 2007) was accompanied earlier by a special installation Greenaway designed for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was shown next to the actual "Nightwatch" painting and casted some light on the characters portrayed in the famous work.

Premiere: Venice Filmfestival, 6 September 2007

Peter Greenaway and his co-operators plan to create an ambitious project for the year of Rembrandt's four hundred year centenary in 2006. The project has the overall title Nightwatching and will be a feature film, an opera, an exhibition and a re-presentation of the painting of the Nightwatch itself with an immersive presentation of the painting's characters and artifacts from the Rijksmuseum.
The feature film Nightwatching concentrates on the year 1642, and the evidence of a dangerous conspiracy contained in the painting of the Nightwatch that mirrors Amsterdam society at the centre of the Golden Age.
The opera Nightwatching concentrates on domestic, social and symbolic relationships of Rembrandt to his three consorts, Saskia, Geertje and Hendrickje in the ubiquitous matrimonial bed.
The center of all these celebrations and investigational activities is the exhibition in the Rijksmuseum.
Peter Greenaway wants to create a re-presentation of the painting of the Nightwatch called Nightwatching as an act of theatre, treating the event of the painting as a theatrical activity of players, costumes, props, light, sound and dialogue set in a highly technical, innovating and creative installation; a combination of art and technology designed for an attentive audience that will be intrigued by a world of light and moving images and the single frozen moment.
Nightwatching the exhibition is the opening event of the Holland Festival's 59th edition on June 2, 2006.

The feature film - Synopsis
In 1654 the Dutch painter Rembrandt awakes from a dream of blindness in his marital bed in Amsterdam, to remember the year 1642, and his most celebrated work later to be known as the Nightwatch. He was then at the height of his powers, his career and his wealth and as a consequence� commissioned by the Amsterdam Musketeer's Militia to paint their group portrait, thirty one amateur soldiers of the Amsterdam Home Guard on parade. At the insistence of his pregnant wife Saskia, anxious to create a secure future for their longed-for, unborn child, he finally agrees to accept the commission, prophetically fearing ill fortune.

From the retrospective standpoint of 1654, where his young mistress Hendrickje comforts him in his fear of blindness, Rembrandt recalls his preparations for the Nightwatch, considering the tradition of Dutch Militia painting, visiting the Militia at their musket-firing exercises in the Amsterdam fields, and working on experimental compositions with his usual army of tramps and vagrants taken from the streets around his house in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam.
Suddenly there is a death. The sympathetic captain of the Militia is shot dead at musket practice. It is pronounced an accident. There is a new commanding officer backed by new family members and associates. The commission is re-ordered.
Happy at the healthy birth of a longed for son, after having witnessed the death of three infant daughters, and confident in his continually soaring reputation, Rembrandt begins the preparatory drawings of the 31 sitters of the group portrait, only to become gradually disenchanted with their arrogance and their hypocrisy, their unashamed lust and greed. The Golden Age of Holland, is seen to be not so Golden. The reported calumnies he uncovers increase. Child sexual exploitation at the Amsterdam Orphanages governed by some of his sitters, appears on the agenda. Finally evidence surfaces that the so-called accidental death of the last commanding officer of the Amsterdam Militia was not so accidental.
Forward in 1654, in the marital bed between dreaming and waking, Rembrandt's wife, Saskia appears, and she, Hendrickje, and Rembrandt, argue and discuss and quarrel about their past lives, refashioning their memories of the year 1642, when, with his three painter friends and former pupils, Ferdinand Bol, Gerrit Dou and Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt investigates the apparent murder, uncovering more corroborating evidence. Rembrandt very confidently imagines he can build his accusation of murder against the conspiring soldier-merchants into the painting they have commissioned. He collects all the information he needs to make the entire painting an indictment for those who have eyes to see.
And then his moment of great good fortune changes. He confidently, even arrogantly, unveils the finished Nightwatch to his public, his critics, admirers, the Amsterdam bourgeoisie, and the mob of the Jewish quarter. The painted conspirators understand the message and recoil from his accusation. The reaction of the sitters proves their discomfort and guilt, and they seek at once to try to destroy Rembrandt because they dare not destroy the painting which is already being acclaimed a significant work. They start to create the financial and social circumstances for his descent into penury. His wife Saskia dies, having never fully recovered from childbirth. Grief-struck, miserable and lonely, Rembrandt's confidence falters. He takes into his bed, his child's nurse, Geertje, not suspecting she is a treacherous mistress coerced by the conspirators to degrade him socially.

In 1654, Geertje joins Rembrandt's other women in the marital bed, and the squabbling and bickering, accusations and counter-accusations, the protestations of love and the revealing of confidences, the jealousies and the plans for revenge increase between Rembrandt and his three women.
Moving between 1654 and 1642, after his excessively carnal affair with Geertje has reached depths of self abasement, Rembrandt realises the subterfuge of her treachery, which supported behind the scenes by the conspirators, creates an issue at the law courts and the blackmailed Rembrandt is obliged to make humiliating concessions. He throws Geertje out of his house, where no longer useful, she is imprisoned in a house of correction by the conspirators to shut her up, and Rembrandt is forced to care for her keep. Rembrandt finds a new sentimental sexual love with his young servant and model Hendrickje and the conspirators turn their attentions to her, seeking to humiliate her and Rembrandt in the church courts when she becomes pregnant. Deprived of patrons and commissions, with his creditors baying, and his debts all called in, Rembrandt will sink further into insolvency.
Back in 1642, the denouement has been instigated - the troubled commissioners express their anger, adjust their positions and begin to fall out amongst themselves, and the finished painting is hung in its appointed place in the Amsterdam Militia Headquarters, on a court occasion where the Militia painting commissioners are seeking preferment. There they plan Rembrandt's blinding, the blinding that Rembrandt continues to dream about in 1654, a blinding that is in fact no dream but a reality.

The Nightwatching feature film premiered on September 6 2007 during the Venice Filmfestival.
 
The exhibition
A poetic combination between theater, moving image and innovating technology. For the exhibition we will use the Philips rooms 11 and 12, the Jan Steen room and the Night Watch room.
In room 11 we plan to stage the Nightwatching installation bringing forward the personal story of all the 34 figures in the painting the Nightwatch. We will create a combination between innovating technology and moving image to display the world of the Nightwatch and the stories behind the people in the painting.
For the installation we will use many screens and various interfaces for the audience, the many screens will be a three dimensional object hanging free in the exhibition space.

Peter Greenaway is a pioneer in combining film, art and technology. In his famous exhibitions he creates new worlds of interactive and moving images to tell stories behind the objects in the exhibition.
One of the other great creative aspects of Greenaway's exhibitions is the use of light - always designed by artist and director of photography Reinier van Brummelen. In the room where the Nightwatch is exposed, we will create a second theatrical installation. The Nightwatch and its surroundings will be put in a theatrical light installation (with many different lighting sequences) and the public will feel and become part of the romantic period of the GOLDEN age.
We will create spaces and emotions by making use of a custom designed lighting system and we will work with state-of-the-art lighting technology, to find possibilities for using light in new ways in the museum environment.
Greenaway's passion for painting and new technology in art, combined with his established international acclaim as an original filmmaker, will make this project a creative and innovating new experience for a large and diverse audience.

Nightwatching the exhibition, June 2 - August 6, 2006, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Nightwatching is a project of The Kasander Film Company.
The exhibition at the Rijksmuseum is a co-production with the Holland Festival and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Credits

Credits Exhibition:

Exhibition:
Produced by The Kasander Film Company
Producer: Kees Kasander
Co-producers: Rijksmuseum & Holland Festival
Director: Peter Greenaway
Assistant to director: Marita Ruyter
Assistant to producer: Natascha Teunissen
Executive development: Ineke Kanters
Pre-production: Antoinette te Paske
Production coordinators: Lisette Kelder & Eva Haak Wegmann
Research: Danielle Bremer
Exhibition designers: Reinier van Brummelen & Maarten Piersma
Supervisor of exhibition: Reinier van Brummelen
Supervisor of construction: Maarten Piersma
Audio visual system integrator: MK2
Exhibition Lighting: Joep Vermeulen, Prodelight
3D modelling: Harm van Zon & StereomatriX
Typographic designer: Brody Neuenschwander
Photography Nightwatch: Cees de Jonge, Rene Engelsman & Antoinette van Dorssen
Construction: Lidewij Kaptijn. Rob Duiker, Roman van de Molen & Robin van Eijk
Paint: Ernst Paradies

Nightwatching Shoot Credits:

Director: Peter Greenaway
Produced by The Kasander Film Company
Producer: Kees Kasander
Assistant to director: Marita Ruyter
Assistant to producer: Natascha Teunissen
Executive development: Ineke Kanters
Director of photography: Reinier van Brummelen
Camera operator: Ruzbeh Babol
Camera assistant: Bianca van Riemsdijk
Production coordinator: Lisette Kelder
Production assistant: Hoite Vellema
Construction design: Maarten Piersma
Light assistant: Remco Breslau, Mark Kniphorst & Patrick Dekker
Gripper: Cees Aloserij
Editor: Elmer Leupen
2nd editor: Irma de Vries
Sound editor: Ranko Paukovic
Art director: Rosie Stapel
Setdresser: Esther Dijkstra
Costume designer: Marrit van der Burgt
Wardrobe assistant: Karen de Meijer
2nd wardrobe assistant: Michael Barnaart van Bergen
Make-up: Suzanne Pelgrim
Make-up assistant: Marjolijn van Waterschoot
Casting: CFTV Casting
Animal casting: Animaux
Animal handlers: Louise Baars & Annemiek Gramberg
Catering: Karen's Catering & Lia Bakker
Special thanks to Mikhail Dronov, Moskou and Alexander Taratynov, Maastricht Somatec NL, Dereumaux XL and to all the extras