The UK theatrical release of the blockbuster HBO/WOW documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures begins today! Yes! London! Belfast! Liverpool! Dublin! Glasgow! Coventry! Manchester! Inverness! AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING!
MAPPLETHORPE: LOOK AT THE PICTURES is the first definitive, feature length portrait of the controversial American artist Robert Mapplethorpe since his death from AIDS in 1989. The one thing more outrageous than Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs was his life. Intimate revelations from family, friends and lovers are topped only by Mapplethorpe’s candor, revealed in a series of rediscovered, never before heard interviews, made public here for the first time. This is the unique portrait of an artist who turned photography into contemporary fine art with a bold vision that ignited a culture war still raging to this day.
Check out the dates and places below:
FROM FRIDAY 22 APRIL
London – Barbican
London – Curzon Bloomsbury (dochouse)
London – Curzon Mayfair
London – Curzon Soho
London – ICA
London – Hackney Picturehouse
London – Picturehouse Central
London – Ritzy Picturehouse
Belfast – Queen’s Film Theatre
Brighton – Duke of York’s Picturehouse
Cambridge – Arts Picturehouse
Liverpool – Picturehouse at FACT
Dublin – Irish Film Institute
FROM FRIDAY 29 APRIL
Chichester – Chichester Cinema
Glasgow – Glasgow Film Theatre
Manchester – Home
Coventry – Warwick Arts Centre
FROM FRIDAY 6 MAY
London – Regent St. Cinema
Peckham – The Back Room Cinema at the Montpelier
Bristol – Cube Cinema
Dundee – Dundee Contemporary Arts
Portsmouth – No6 Cinema
FROM FRIDAY 24 JUNE
Inverness – Eden Court
(via dogwoof)
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures has been getting rave reviews just about EVERYWHERE, no surprise. Read some of them below:
The British Journal of Photography: “The new HBO documentary, ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures,’ directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, takes you through a thrilling and emotionally charged account of the life of a photographer as obsessed with sex and recognition as he was in mastering his craft.”
The Guardian: “Justice is done to a brilliant photographer… Robert Mapplethorpe transformed the rhetoric of porn into stunning imagery and [this documentary] does his work justice…”
The Big Gay Picture Show: “The documentary does an amazing job of telling us about a genuinely fascinating life, with some great interviews with everyone from Debbie Harry to Brooke Shields, along with family members (most notably his brother, who worked alongside Robert) and several of Mapplethorpe’s lovers. They reveal a complicated and sometimes difficult man – someone who could simultaneously be vain and utterly self-absorbed and yet also absolutely open both in his life and his art.”
The Financial Times: “The spry new documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, appreciative of its subject’s gifts, frank about his flaws. You can also use it as a guide to the 1980s art world and the journey of Manhattan from scuzzy bohemia to real estate gold mine.”
Flick Reel: “Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s exemplary documentary does everything a documentary should. Not only does it explore how Mapplethorpe became one of the most sought-after and revered photographers of his generation, but it sheds new light on what he was like as a person through first-hand testimony from family, friends and lovers.”
Uncut: “The title for Bailey and Barbato’s documentary comes from a phrase repeatedly used by American senator Jesse Helms during his attempts to demonise Mapplethorpe during the 1990s. But in some ways, the controversy Mapplethorpe attracted during his life and after his death – in 1989 from complications arising from AIDS, aged 42 – is the least interesting part of Mapplethorpe’s story.”
