HeSaidDenver at the Denver Film Fest, Black White and Gray

What happened to independent cinema?

Not the Miramax-bankrolled, opening-in-every-hip-cineplex kind. We’re talking about legit indies; those little-but-powerful pictures that for reasons related to distribution or budget don’t get to see the light of day (or the dark of a theater). So where’s an indie-buff to go? Head downtown this weekend for the final round of the Denver Film Fest.

One film we’re sure to turn up for is Black, White + Gray, a documentary about the New York art curator Sam Wagstaff and his relationship with the famous (and infamous) Robert Mapplethorpe. Produced, written and directed by James Crump, this film takes us back to the late 70’s and 80’s, and gives us a glimpse into Wagstaff’s life as a high-society curator, a revolutionary purveyor of iconic photography, a long-time repressed homosexual, and most importantly, his love and life with Robert Mapplethorpe.

At its core, Black, White + Gray is a film that explores the complications that arise when Wagstaff’s oppressed passions and closeted homosexuality become manifested in the iconic and avant-garde photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. For Wagstaff, the images serve as a map of personal self-discovery, but for the then young Mapplethorpe, the shocking and often controversial portraits force him to publicly confront repressed sexual undercurrents in society and grapple with bouts of dismissal and anger by both art critics and the masses alike.

Told through a series of in-depth interviews with art scholars and major players from that era including, Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne, “punk priestess” Pattie Smith, and Vogue critic Joan Juliet Buck, the story extends its ode to art-as-life into the relevance of the here and now.

Beaux Arts

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