Robert Mapplethorpe

Dirty Pictures

Self

A Cincinnati museum director goes on trial in 1990 for exhibiting sadomasochistic photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

Self (archive footage)

Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.

Kathy Acker

Self

Documentary about Kathy Acker where she talks about her writing and her life in New York.

Hervé Guibert, la mort propagande

Self (archive footage)

From this "inexorable disease", Hervé Guibert did not recover. The miracle he had so much hoped for did not happen. But, before his death in 1991, three years after learning of his HIV-positive status, he engraved in his literary and photographic work "the places of [his] suffering", "the stations of [his] way of the cross". With his thin body and sunken cheeks, the handsome man with curly hair that he was, the one whose clear gaze radiated from the seaside photos, fought a fierce battle against AIDS. A fight of every moment against the decay of the body, observed and commented with a methodical care in his autobiographical novels, in particular "To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life" (1990) and "The Compassionate Protocol" (1991), and of which he testified on television on the set of "Apostrophes"...

Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe

Self (archive footage)

Crump directed the feature-length documentary film Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff + Robert Mapplethorpe, which premiered in North America at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and in Europe at Art Basel. It explores the influence curator Sam Wagstaff, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and musician/poet Patti Smith had on the 1970s art scene in New York City.

Chelsea Hotel

Self

A pilot for a documentary film capturing life at the Chelsea Hotel in the early 1970s. The film was never finished due to budget issues. 'A regrettable folly of my youth,' said the director, Albert Scopin.

Fellow Travelers

Self (archive)

Portraits of some of the gay community's most renowned artists and spiritual leaders, with commentary by noted author and photographer Mark Thompson.

Still Moving/Patti Smith

Himself

Short film by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. A portrait of Patti Smith.

Program No. 61: Robert Mapplethorpe

A look at at the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe, a world renowned and controversial photographer, who died of AIDS in 1989. It explores his photography, his relationship to the downtown New York art world, and the gay S&M club scene prevalent in the eighties. His infamously explicit pictures of the gay, leather, New York Underground were considered groundbreaking and made him a cause celebre. Mapplethorpe’s portraits, flowers, erotic subject matter and artistic presentation, elevated the photograph to serious art, worthy of exhibition in galleries and museums.