What a beautiful night! Jenny (newyearsday) took me to the most wonderful film, and we met a new friend,
Don Bachardy, the star of this amazing documentary.
I hope you will have a chance to see this--it's just incredible!
The Trailer:
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/chris&don/Chris & Don: a love story(USA, 2007, 90 mins)
Directed By: Guido Santi, Tina Mascara When 18-year-old
Don Bachardy was introduced to 49-year-old
Christopher Isherwood in 1950s Malibu, neither man knew it would be the start of a love story that would last for 30 years.
Chris & Don chronicles their years together, with the vibrant and engaging Don at this extraordinary documentary’s epicenter. Don, a UCLA student with artistic talents, became the ideal companion for Isherwood, the celebrated British writer best known for his Berlin Stories.
Despite their age difference, a relationship blossomed, and Don soon moved in with Chris. Growing up in the LA suburbs enamored with Hollywood, Don had crashed premieres to take photos with celebrities. With Chris, he suddenly found himself hobnobbing with all manner of luminaries from the arts and literary scene, such as
WH Auden,
Igor Stravinsky, and
Tennessee Williams.
Encouraged by Chris, Don developed his artistic ambitions in art school and eventually found his own fame as a painter, with Chris as his regular model. Open about their relationship at a time when homosexuality wasn’t discussed in polite conversation, Chris and Don weathered the various storms resulting from their different ages, classes, and backgrounds, and remained together until Chris’ death in 1986.
Combining interviews with Don, Chris’ personal journal entries, rare home movies, and archival footage,
Guido Santi and
Tina Mascara have crafted a very personal story, best demonstrated through the charming animated sequences depicting the horse and cat alter-egos the couple doodled on their personal letters over the years.
Chris & Don is a touching, illuminating portrait of the enduring power of love.
A sleeper hit at the
Telluride Film Festival,
CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY is the true-life story of the passionate three-decade relationship between British writer
Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin Stories was the basis for all incarnations of the much-beloved
Cabaret) and American portrait painter
Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior. From Isherwood’s
Kit-Kat-Club years in Weimar-era Germany (the inspiration for his most famous work) to the couple’s first meeting on the sun-kissed beaches of 1950s Malibu, their against-all-odds saga is brought to dazzling life by a treasure trove of multimedia. Bachardy’s contemporary reminiscences (in the Santa Monica home he shared with Isherwood until his death in 1986) artfully interact with archival footage, rare home movies (with glimpses of glitterati pals
W.H. Auden,
Igor Stravinsky and
Tennessee Williams), reenactments, and, most sweetly, whimsical animations based on the cat-and-horse cartoons the pair used in their personal correspondence. With Isherwood’s status as an out-and-proud gay maverick, and Bachardy’s eventual artistic triumph away from the considerable shadow of his life partner,
CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY is above all a joyful celebration of a most extraordinary couple.
CHRIS & DON will open on June 13 2008 at New York's
Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, (212) 255-8800