The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe wanted to be more than just a photographer. He wanted to be a modern master. A new film offers a portrait of the artist who, at the height of his craft, flirted with self-destruction.
Matt Smith joins us to discuss starring in the biopic, “Mapplethorpe,” along with the film's director, Ondi Timoner.
Filmmaker Ondi Timoner was sitting on an all-female panel at Sundance last winter when inspiration struck. The #MeToo movement had been swirling in the media for months, and so many of those stories centered around women positioning themselves as victims. A longtime advocate for women’s issues, Ondi saw an opportunity to push these conversations a step further.
From the early '70s until his untimely death at age 42, "Mapplethorpe," directed by Ondi Timoner, explores the intersection of Robert Mapplethorpe's art and sexuality, his struggle for mainstream recognition, and, looming above it all, the specter of the emerging AIDS crisis. Featuring Matt Smith ("Doctor Who," "The Crown") and Marianne Rendón, the biopic offers a nuanced portrait of an artist at the height of his craft and of the self-destructive impulses that threaten to undermine it all.
As the 30th anniversary of his death approaches, lovers of contemporary art are once again examining the life and work of the controversial photographer, whose stark black-and-white images continue to elicit critical raves and public outrage alike.
Ondi Timoner, the documentary filmmaker who is making her narrative feature debut with the Matt Smith-starring biopic Mapplethorpe, has signed with APA and Dialed-in Entertainment.
We picked up the Audience Award on Closing Night at #OutonFilm this weekend & Matt Smith won for Best Actor in a Feature! The highlight of my 15 hours in #Atlanta was Q&Aing with the brilliant & beautiful McKinley Belcher III aka “Milton Moore” in Mapplethorpe Movie - Thx Felicia Feaster, John H. Ransom Sallie Golden Ransom for the photos & Fay Gold Gallery Atlanta (for incredible Robert Mapplethorpe stories!) #mapplethorpemovie#closingnight Interloper Films #AudienceAward Congrats Nancy Schreiber, Jonah Markowitz & Team #Mapplethorpe !
Thank you Felicia Feaster for this thoroughly-researched, thoughtful interview with me on Mapplethorpe Movie & film in general - See you tomorrow in #Atlanta for Closing Night of #OutonFilm - 9pm, Plaza Theater. McKinley Belcher III is going to join me for the Q&A!
It has been nearly 30 years since Robert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS at the age of 42. In a career that blossomed rapidly within a decade, Mapplethorpe set new stakes as an artist-photographer. However, during his life, his work also was commingled with protests by politicians and the Christian right-wing, which gained huge political influence during the Reagan years, and triggered unwarranted fears during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and censorship of creative expression. Mapplethorpe’s death did not end the controversies. This included, of course, the first arrest and jury trial ever of a museum director, Dennis Barrie, who served as the director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.
Here's a new in depth NPR interview with Ondi about Mapplethorpe Movie for your morning drive! The Utah Film Center screening and Q&A is tonight at 7PM, free to the public here in Salt Lake City. Off now to shoot my current documentary on opioids and then speak with U of Utah film students! Interloper Films #filmmakerlife #MAPPLETHORPE
We are mid-festival tour and thrilling audiences, picking up awards. Here’s some upcoming dates. Please come see us when we land in your city!
Art Newspaper Film Festival, Moscow
9/13 - 9/23 - Screening TBD
Reeling Film Festival - Chicago, IL
9/21 9:30pm - Tickets Available Here!
Landmark's Century Centre Cinema
CENTERPIECE FILM
Oslo Fusion International Film Festival - Oslo, Norway
9/21 9pm - Tickets Available Here!
9/23 7pm - Tickets Available Here!
Cinema Diverse: Palm Springs LGBT FF - Palm Springs, CA
9/23 5:15pm - Tickets Available Here!
Camelot Theater One
CENTERPIECE FILM
Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
10/10 7:45pm - Tickets Available Here!
Tampa Theatre
Ondi Timoner Retrospective (DIG!, JOIN US, MAPPLETHORPE)
Bend Film Festival
10/11 - 10/14 - Screening TBD
CLOSING NIGHT!
Out on Film - Atlanta, GA
10/6 9pm - Tickets Available Here!
Plaza Theater
Warsaw Film Festival - Warsaw, Poland
10/12 - 10/21- Screening TBD
OUTshine GLBT Film Festival - Ft Lauderdale
10/18 - 10/28 - Screening TBD
TWIST: Seattle Queer Film Festival - Seattle, WA
10/19 - Screening TBD
Gender Bender Film Festival Bologna, Italy
10/21 - 11/4 - Screening TBD
Newfest Film Festival - NYC
10/27 - Screening TBD
Thessaloniki International Film Festival - Thessaloníki, Greece
11/1 - 11/11 - Screening TBD
Scottsdale International Film Festival - Scottsdale, AZ
11/9 - Screening TBD
11/10 - Panel TBD
CLOSING NIGHT!
Cucalorus Festival - Wilmington, NC
11/11 - Screening TBD
Cork Film Festival - Cork CIty, Ireland
11/9 - 11/18 - Screening TBD
Key West Film Festival - Key West, FL
11/14 - 11/18 - Screening TBD
Screening in Conjunction with Mapplethorpe Exhibit!
Queer Lisboa International Queer Film Festival - Lisbon Portugal
11/23 - 11/25 - Screening TBD
Interloper Films is proud to have received The Audience Awards at Q Film in Long Beach & in Austin at Agliff for Mapplethorpe this past weekend. Kudos to Ondi Timoner for winning Best Director too at Long Beach. And Congratulations to the talented female filmmakers: Madeleine Olnek, writer/director of Wild Nights with Emily for Best Feature & Screenplay at Q Film Long Beach & Melissa Haizlip, director of Mr. Soul, Best Feature Documentary at Agliff!
Read the full article on ocweekly.com
Samuel Goldwyn Films has secured North American rights to Ondi Timoner’s biopic “Mapplethorpe,” starring Matt Smith as the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, will be released in the late fall. Timoner directed from a script she co-wrote with Mikko Alanne. The film is produced by Eliza Dushku, Timoner, Nate Dushku, and Richard J Bosner. Executive producers are Peter Palandjian and Sam Maydew.
Marianne Rendón stars as singer Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe’s longtime roommate and partner. The cast also includes John Benjamin Hickey, Mark Moses, Carolyn McCormick, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Kerry Butler.
Read the full story on Variety.com.
Matt Smith convinces as the controversial photographer in Ondi Timoner’s guilty-pleasure biopic.
The major thing that “Mapplethorpe” has in its favor is that the film is afraid of neither the life nor the work of the notorious photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Documentary director Ondi Timoner (“We Live in Public”), making her narrative debut, has ensured that this movie acknowledges the many hard edges and unattractive qualities of this man while also celebrating and not looking away from his most explicit and scariest photographs, many of which rather surprisingly appear on screen.
The film examines the life and art of iconic photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (a riveting Matt Smith), who was notorious for depicting S&M scenes and phalluses, with stark, elegant beauty. Mapplethorpe’s work challenged the art world in the ’70s and ’80s and scandalized political conservatives: “He was trying to make photos that could be deemed obscene into classical art,” Timoner notes.
Photo Credit: Jolene Siana @jolenesiana
When entrepreneur Jimmy Stice asked filmmaker Ondi Timoner to visit Kalu Yala, “the world’s greatest sustainable modern town” that he’s building in the middle of the Panamanian jungle, she didn’t have plans to film a documentary.
Timoner was simply curious to see Stice’s work in action — but that quickly changed when she witnessed the project firsthand and met the participants. In an interview with Bustle, the two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner says that, upon arrival, she instinctively broke out her camera. One thing quickly lead to another and, after 1,500 hours of footage and months spent in the jungle, the docuseries Jungletown will premiere on Viceland on March 28. Timoner’s hope is that “the show will impact people’s lives when we turn off the TV.”
As a documentarian she made the cult favorite DIG! about the friendship/rivalry of rockers Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. She followed it up with We Live in Public, Amanda F***ng Palmer on the Rocks, and Brand: A Second Coming. Robert Mapplethorpe (already the subject of several biographies and documentaries) is the latest artist to be examined by Timoner, who’s made her narrative debut with Mapplethorpe; or as she specifies, her first scripted feature. Starring Matt Smith as Mapplethorpe opposite, Marianne Rendón, John Benjamin Hickey and Brandon Sklenar, Timoner’s portrait of the prolific and controversial artist received the Second Place Audience Award (To Dust won first place) at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Photo Credit: Jolene Siana @jolenesiana
The film spans his arrival as a complete unknown in the rough-and-tumble days of New York City of the Seventies to his international acclaim in the Eighties before succumbing to AIDS.