by James Crump, USA 2017, 90'
| CAMERA: Robert O’Haire | PRODUCERS: James Crump & Ronnie Sassoon | |
| EDITING: Nick Tamburri | PRODUCTION: Summitridge Pictures | |
| SOUND: Rick Ash & Gary Gegan | DISTRIBUTION: Dogwoof Global | |
| LANGUAGE: English |
Presented at Lo Schermo dell'arte 2017
A pop movie with an extraordinary soundtrack - Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Chic, and the Temptations - the film recounts the fashion business from 1969 to 1973 through the figure of Antonio Lopez, the most influential fashion illustrator of the time, who died of AIDS in 1987. Originally from Puerto Rico, raised in the Bronx, Lopez renewed the postwar fashion scene, inspired by ethnology and street-life in New York and Paris. Thanks to a mix of photographic and video materials and interviews with major figures of the fashion of those years, including Paul Caranicas, Joan Juliet Buck, Charles James, Grace Coddington, Crump’s film narrates the uninhibited and turbulent relationships between Lopez’s friends and collaborators. Among them: his creative partner Juan Ramos, Yves-Saint Laurent, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, the makeup artist Corey Tippin, photographer Bill Cunningham, and his muses, Cathee Dahmen, Grace Jones, Pat Cleveland, Tina Chow, Jessica Lange and Jerry Hall. This colorful and extravagant milieu changed the story of style and the idea of fashion as an artistic expression.
A pop movie with an extraordinary soundtrack - Donna Summer, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Chic, and the Temptations - the film recounts the fashion business from 1969 to 1973 through the figure of Antonio Lopez, the most influential fashion illustrator of the time, who died of AIDS in 1987. Originally from Puerto Rico, raised in the Bronx, Lopez renewed the postwar fashion scene, inspired by ethnology and street-life in New York and Paris. Thanks to a mix of photographic and video materials and interviews with major figures of the fashion of those years, including Paul Caranicas, Joan Juliet Buck, Charles James, Grace Coddington, Crump’s film narrates the uninhibited and turbulent relationships between Lopez’s friends and collaborators. Among them: his creative partner Juan Ramos, Yves-Saint Laurent, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, the makeup artist Corey Tippin, photographer Bill Cunningham, and his muses, Cathee Dahmen, Grace Jones, Pat Cleveland, Tina Chow, Jessica Lange and Jerry Hall. This colorful and extravagant milieu changed the story of style and the idea of fashion as an artistic expression.
James Crump
He was chief curator of the Cincinnati Art Museum until 2013. He has staged numerous exhibitions and published books on, among others, Nan Goldin, Doug Aitken, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Willem de Kooning. He has collaborated with Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the International Center of Photography/ The Gray Art Gallery in New York. His films were screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance, New York Film Festival, Art Basel. They were presented at Lo schermo dell’arte.
Selected Filmography
2015 Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art 2007 Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe
2015 Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art 2007 Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe