Small Gestures in Bare Rooms is artist/filmmaker Tim Meara’s staged recreation of the inner world of the artist Lucian Freud, who died in July 2011, two years after filming.  The film, a co-production between Portland Green Cultural Projects and Centre Pompidou, and commissioned for a retrospective of Freud’s work at the museum in 2010, features the artist in a rare screen appearance, his first since granting an interview for the BBC in 1988.

A small group of Freud’s inner circle appears alongside the artist in the film, in what Meara calls filmed “silent portraits”.  These include Freud’s daughter Bella, his long-standing assistant David Dawson, and the writer Francis Wyndham, who also contributes a reflective voice-over narration.  Meara films with deliberation Lucian Freud in his studio and along the canals of London’s Little Venice, close to the artist’s home.  The film revolves around two staged performances, choreographed by Rafael Bonachela for dancer Amy Hollingsworth, fluently translating the artist’s measured mystique of his public persona.

RIGHTS CONTACT: programme@portlandgreen.com