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Mapplethorpe

US Narrative Competition

World Premiere

USA | 95 MINUTES | English |

MAPPLETHORPE

New York, Drama, Female Director(s), Female Screenwriter(s), Tribeca Film Institute Alumni
Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits, images of calla lilies, and chronicles of New York City’s underground BDSM scene remain touchstones of 20th-century photography even now, nearly three decades after his death from complications of HIV/AIDS in 1989. Mapplethorpe revisits the titular photographer’s legacy, beginning at the moment just before he takes up residence in the Chelsea Hotel. There, Mapplethorpe begins to amass a portfolio of images—and, at the same time, to explore his formerly supressed attraction to men. But Mapplethorpe’s relentless ambition—as he says in one early scene, “I can’t just be Mapplethorpe the photographer,” fancying himself a “modern Michelangelo”—threatens to tear apart the relationships he cherishes the most.

From the early ’70s until his untimely death at age 42, the film explores the intersection of his art and his 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.

—Cara Cusmano

CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Ondi Timoner

Ondi Timoner has won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice: in 2004 for the documentary, DIG!; and in 2009 for the documentary, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC. Her previous film BRAND: A Second Coming opened SXSW in 2015, and her short films Amanda Fucking Palmer on the Rocks and Library of Dust were Tribeca selections in 2012 and 2014.
Director
Ondi Timoner
Producers
Eliza Dushku, Ondi Timoner, Nathaniel Dushku, Richard J. Bosner
Screenplay by
Ondi Timoner, Mikko Alanne
Cinematographer
Nancy Schreiber
Editors
Lee Percy, John Allen, Ondi Timoner
Composer
Marcelo Zavos
Executive Producers
Peter Palandjian, Sam Maydew
Co-Producers
Amnon Lourie, Rosemary Lombard, Benjamin Schwartz, Linda Pizzuti Henry
Based on a Screenplay By
Bruce Goodrich
Cast
Matt Smith, Marianne Rendón, John Benjamin Hickey, Brandon Sklenar, McKinley Belcher III, Mark Moses

CONTACTS

International Sales Contact
Brian O’Shea
the exchange.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Phone: 310 935 3760
brian@theexchange.ws
US Sales Contact
Nicholas Shumaker
United Talent Agency
New York, NY 10106
Phone: 212 659 2600
shumakern@unitedtalent.com
Print Source
Isabel Henderson
Roberto Sammy Productions
New York, NY 10014
Phone: 213 272 4559
isabel.henderson@gmail.com
Press Contact
Adam Kersh
Fusion Entertainment
New York, NY 10011
Phone: 917 771 7021
adam@fusion-entertainment.com