Event Date
Tuesday, May 8 2012 : 6:30pm – 8:30pmLocation
The CenterDescription
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 
Doors Open at 6:30PM, Program at 7PM
Second Tuesday Presents Pink Narcissus with James Bidgood in Conversation with Ira Sachs
James Bidgood presents a full showing of his extraordinary film Pink Narcissus. The Center is thrilled to present the full 71-minute film, followed by an interview of Mr. Bidgood by filmmaker Ira Sachs.
More About James Bidgood
Mr. Bidgood's artistic output has embraced a number of media and disciplines, including music, set and window design, and drag performance. In time his interests led him to photography and film and it is for this work that he is most widely known. Highly recognizable, his photographs are distinguished by an aesthetic of high fantasy and camp. His work which was inspired by an early interest in Florenz Ziegfeld, Folies Bergère, and George Quaintance has, in turn, served as important inspiration for a slew of new artists including Pierre et Gilles and David LaChapelle.
Bidgood released the film Pink Narcissus in 1971, after filming in his small apartment from 1963 to 1970. The film is a dialogue-free fantasy centered around a young and often naked man. The film took seven years to make, and Bidgood built all the sets and filmed the entire piece in his tiny apartment. He later removed his name from the film because he felt editors had changed his original vision. Consequently, the film bore the word "Anonymous" for the director's credit, and it was misattributed to other directors such as Andy Warhol for many years.
James Bidgood helped define gayness as we know it today: camp, identity, erotics and desire, marginality, and performance all figure heavily in his portraits of nude men. Bidgood masterfully created theater and performance that would only be appreciated 40 years later. His techniques, working processes, and masterful use of illusionistic color indicate both a mature understanding of his influences and goals and an important contrast to the art movements of the time the work was first created.
More About Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1965, and moved to New York after graduating from Yale University with a BA in Literature and Film Theory. His films, including the features Married Life (2007), The Delta (1997), and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning Forty Shades of Blue (2005), have been screened at the Berlin, Toronto, New York, Rotterdam, and London Film Festivals, as well as in most of the major gay and lesbian film festivals worldwide. A recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1999, Sachs has been an Adjunct Professor in the MFA Program at the Columbia University School of Film, a creative advisor at the Sundance Director’s Lab, and a fellow at both the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He is presently working on a new feature, The Goodbye People, co-written with Oren Moverman, and adapted from the fiction of screenwriter and novelist Gavin Lambert.
Price
$10Register
Tickets can be purchased at the door!
For More Information
Yojani Hernandez, yhernandez@gaycenter.org, 212-620-7310
