Pink Narcissus: Phantoscope

Phantoscope, Triskel’s quarterly experimental film event, presents the new restoration of James Bidgood’s underground masterpiece PINK NARCISSUS. A kaleidoscopic fever dream of queer desire, this outrageous erotic poem focuses on the daydreams of a beautiful boy prostitute who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves, and leather-clad bikers. 

Shot over seven years on 8mm film, Pink Narcissus transforms a humble New York apartment into a technicolor fantasia of sexual awakening. Bidgood’s handcrafted sets and saturated lighting create a theatrical dreamscape in which artifice becomes transcendent. Classical music by Mussorgsky and Prokofiev underscores the film’s ambitious fusion of high art and homoeroticism, while its confined domestic production speaks to both necessity and liberation - a queer creative spirit refusing to be constrained by material limitations. With its highly charged hallucinogenic quality and its atmosphere of lush decadence, PINK NARCISSUS is a landmark of gay and experimental cinema. 

A 5 minute video introduction by Todd Wiener, Motion Picture Curator at UCLA Film & Television Archive, will be screened before the film. 

“A movie of garish colour, mute melodrama and dreamlike imagery.” The Guardian