Peter Greenaway revealed more details about his next feature Food Of Love when he pitched the project at this week’s fourth Moscow Co-Production Forum as part of the Moscow Business Square.

Speaking to an international audience which included such Russian producers as Natalia Ivanova (Horosho Production), Evgeny Gindilis (TVINDIE), and Mila Kudryashova (Silkway Studio), Greenaway stressed that potential partners should not expect a remake or rewrite of Thomas Mann’s novella Death In Venice or for the legendary Hotel des Bains to appear on screen.

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“A piece of music by Vivaldi was probably the initial inspiration for the whole film, it’s a melancholic piece of music arranged in a way that Vivaldi only knows well,” he explained. “It has, I suppose, an outward feeling of jubilation and celebration with a deep sense of melancholy underneath. I hope we can fascinate and excite you.”

Just over €600,000 of the €2.02m budget is in place from Italian and Dutch partners – the veteran director now lives in Amsterdam -, and he was in Moscow to find a Russian production partner.

“We’re looking to shoot 60% in Venice and I would very much like to shoot the other 40% in St Petersburg,” Greenaway said. “If you do have a memory indeed of that Visconti masterpiece, you will know that it is about the carnal love for a young boy. Very difficult, sensitive subject matter, but Visconti certainly knew that and the audiences who saw the film knew that. That film was made in 1971 and we are now in 2012: a lot has happened inbetweentimes. And I suppose the parameters for the movie is the future history of that young boy.”

Recalling his 1989 film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, he commented that it “was, in some ways, a study in evil. I want to be able in the intervening years to return to that subject [in the new film]. Obviously, it will be a picture that is highly visual and you can imagine that the scenography will take place in these two extraordinary cities.”

It goes without saying that Greenaway is preparing this project with his usual producer Kees Kasander and Kasanderfilm. The planned schedule is for principal photography to begin on Food For Love in summer 2013.

Meanwhile, the Russian film newspaper Cinemotion reported that the UK filmmaker will be staging casting calls for another future feature project Eisenstein in Guanajuato in St Petersburg.

Moreover, Greenaway will be travelling to the Odessa International Film Festival next month to give a Master Class for students at the Summer Film School where he will speak, among other things, about his latest film Goltzius and the Pelican Company