A motion picture artwork in 8-parts starring Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness and Richard Burton, BACONS HISTORIES: Study for a Portrait explores the influence of the Histories on Francis Bacon's painting, from Greek drama and Egyptian sculpture to T. S. Eliot and Shakespeare. The film includes previously unpublished interviews with Francis Bacon recorded and provided by David Sylvester, where Bacon recounts his biography in early 20th century Ireland, England, Berlin and Paris in his own words. The film accompanies Bacon's close friend and interviewer David Sylvester as he hangs the retrospective exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and includes the only existing interview with Henrietta Moraes (1931-1999), Bacon's most frequently painted female subject. The film offers a contemporary feminist reading of Bacon and a re-evaluation of Francis Bacon's standing as an openly homosexual artist long before homosexuality was decriminalised in England in '67. Language plays a significant role in the interweaving of these voices, whether in French- a language in which Bacon felt best understood through a lifelong relationship to French culture and French thinkers- or in Greek, a constant echo of the Greek playwrights Bacon so greatly admired , as well as the great English playwrights, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot, brought to us by Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, John Gielgud, Alec Guiness and Richard Burton.
Running time: 00:50:00