Bart Everly has Velvet Vision
Interview with VELVET VISION Filmmaker Bart Everly
Filmmaker Bart Everly talks about his early years as a young man and how he discovered art through magazines, which led to a life in the East Village and ultimately to the door of the legendary artist Jim Bidgood.
Jim Bidgood made the 70s cult erotic film, Pink Narcissus, which for decades was credited to anonymous. The film had been taken away from Bidgood and completed without his involvement. When Everly heard that Bidgood was picking up a camera for the first time in 40 years, he saw his next documentary.
Little did he know that he would be joining Jim’s world, an insane carnival of genius and mental health challenges. The two year documentary turned into 18 years but the end result, Velvet Vision: The life of Jim Bidgood and the making of Pink Narcissus is an astonishing portrayal of the challenges artists face without support systems and the dark side of genius.
Art only stimulated by praise or profit is not art; if it is not born from pain or anguish or pride or shame or desire or overwhelming joy, it is only something of decorative value"
Jim Bidgood
Interview by The Lab Mag
Filmed & edited by Michael Piccirilli
Sound by Royce Hall
Images and film footage courtesy of Bart Everly
’It's Really Gonna Happen’ from the soundtrack composed by The Angel
Special thanks to Bart Everly, The Angel & Kevin Herlihy
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