Goltzius and the Pelican Company

Goltzius and the Pelican Company
Director
Peter Greenaway
Country
Netherlands, United kingdom, France, Croatia
Year
2012
Genre
Drama, History
Scriptwriters
Peter Greenaway
Cast
F. Murray Abraham, Vincent Riotta, Halina Reijn
Production
Kasander Film; in co-production with CDP (France), MP Film Production (Croatia)

Storyline

In 1600, the Dutch engraver and printer Goltzius tells of his adventures to find finance to afford a new printing press to print illustrated books, when he travelled to Colmar in Alsace on his way to Italy in the winter of 1590. He proposed to the liberal-minded Margrave of Alsace to make two grand illustrated books, a version of the Old Testament and a version of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. To sweeten the possibility of a deal, Goltzius, with the male and female members of his printing and theatrical company, stage six dramatisations of Old Testament erotic stories, symbolising the six sexual taboos of fornication, incest, adultery, paedophilia, prostitution and necrophilia - Adam & Eve, Lot & His Daughters, David & Bathsheba, Potiphar’s Wife, Samson & Delilah, and (from the New Testament) Salome & John the Baptist.   

The frank dramatisations of these erotic stories invoke surprise, shock and controversy at the court and among the court ecclesiatics - a Roman Catholic, a Calvinist and a Jewish Rabbi  - and the erotic pleasures tempt and entice the Margrave, his family and his court to become sexually involved, which ends with the Goltzius playwright Boethius being beheaded as John the Baptist in a scandal that disgraces the Margrave, forcing him to pay for the printing press and order the commissioned books, with a suggestion that Goltzius should return to Alsace when he has finished the Old Testament commission to begin work on the second commission on Ovid, to be called Goltzius & Spranger.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Netherlands Film Festival
Rome Film Festival 2012
Göteborg International Film Festival 2013
Sitges Film Festival 2013
Noves Visions - Ficció

Releases

Russia (16 of May 2013)

Call for proposals Development
Year 2009
Call number 24/2008
Media support 140.000,00 €

Slate Funding
To: Kasander Film

Call for proposals i2i Audiovisual
Year 2011
Call number 24/2011
Media support 34.667,51€

To: Kasander Film Company

Call for proposals Distribution Automatic
Year 2013
Call number 07/2012
Media support 2.412,00€

Distribution: Poland
To: STOWARZYSZENIE NOWE HORYZONTY