MPHQ Pictures

MPHQ Pictures is currently in production on the film BACON’S HISTORIES; Study for a Portrait shooting in Greece, London, Paris, Spain, Botswana, Egypt and Germany.

© Martha Parsey

The final film in Martha Parsey’s Francis Bacon film trilogy explores the influence of the Histories, namely the Greek dramas, Egyptian sculpture, and poetry and literature on Francis Bacon’s painting; both in his style and choice of subject matter. The film is underscored by previously unpublished interviews with Francis Bacon discussing at length the influence of the Greeks and Egyptians, as well as the influence of the poets T. S. Eliot and the work of Shakespeare. 

The style of this film is derived from Greek tragedy, note the closing words of Oedipus… ‘Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending’. The origins of the art of drama, its roots in the instinct for ritualistic expression, impersonation, and interpretation of the power of natural forces, the nexus of past, present and future, the expression of the sensation and reasonings excited by the battles with the external forces that appear to govern man’s life: in Sophocles’ words ‘the battle of man with more than man’.