MAPPLETHORPE: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
This episode of Big Blend Radio features Ondi Timoner, award-winning filmmaker and director of “Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut.” Listen here in the YouTube player or download the podcast on Podbean or SoundCloud.
In the all too rare tradition of restoring the original vision of a film, Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut adds new scenes and a vibrant new soundtrack, to provide a richer, more contextual narrative of the biopic of the controversial photographer’s life and work.
Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was among the most consequential and controversial artists of the 20th Century.
Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut, offers restored scenes depicting Mapplethorpe’s childhood love of photography, his embattled relationship with his father, and his lingering, ambivalent connection to the Catholic faith. The film follows Robert’s important love affair with Patti Smith and his subsequent, pivotal romance with powerhouse art collector Sam Wagstaff. We see Mapplethorpe’s development of a precise, erotically-charged photographic style, along with his ultimately successful struggle to attain mainstream recognition—a status interrupted, although barely halted, by his untimely death from AIDS.
Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut, portrays a nuanced portrait of an artist at the height of his craft, along with the self-destructive impulses that threatened to undermine everything he prized.
Foothill Productions is proud to present the full, definitive story of the 20th Century’s most transgressive artist, with Mapplethorpe, The Director’s Cut. The film stars Matt Smith, John Benjamin Hickey & Marianne Rendón, was directed by Ondi Timoner, and written by Mikko Alanne and Ondi Timoner. The film is available to watch on all major digital platforms.
