PETER Greenaway, one of modern film-making's most daring and thought-provoking directors, is planning a piece of his latest cinematic vision for his home city of Newport.

The Riverfront arts centre, over the river from the Rugby Road house of Greenaway's early boyhood, is among venues checked out by the 63-year-old during a two-day trip to Wales.

The aim is to mount an exhibition during the autumn linked to Greenaway's latest project, The Tulse Luper Suitcases.

Three films, several pieces for television, exhibitions, art installations, and websites, chart the life of fictional character Tulse Luper, through 60 years to 1989.

The films for cinema tell only part of the stories of this life, because Greenaway wants to bring cinema "out of its box", pool it with other media to respond to an increasingly interactive, multi-media world.

"I have this great anxiety we will end up with great, formulaic Hollywood cinema, and we need to do something about it," he said.

"Today, far more people will watch feature films directly at home than would ever go to see them at the cinema.

"The whole relationship between audience and cinema has changed. We have a world of interactivity and multi-media, and this project seeks to embrace all of that."

The Riverfront is apt for this project not only due to its proximity to Greenaway's first home, but because the Tulse Luper character also grows up here. The exhibition will be of love letters written by Tulse Luper's father to his mother from the Flanders trenches during the First World War.

"Tulse Luper is a fictional character, in some ways based on me," said Greenaway, who remembers a much different riverside in Newport to that of today.

Greenaway was five years old in 1947 when his father returned from service in India and the family moved to London. But there were frequent visits to the then town and other parts of South Wales to visit relatives.

"The Riverfront is clearly a status building central to the life of Newport," he said.

"I remember buildings all along here (the riverside), remember catching boats to Barry Island and Porthcawl, walking to the Transporter Bridge and going over every Sunday.

"Newport and South Wales have been places of constant revisiting. I'm always surprised when I come back, there's something new every time."