David Bailey, Four Beats to the Bar and no Cheating

David Bailey is a cultural icon who has been at the cutting-edge of contemporary art for fifty years. From Vogue magazine fashion photographer to filmmaker, painter and sculptor, Bailey is the working-class Londoner who befriended the stars (Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski), married his muses (Jean Shrimpton, Catherine Deneuve, Marie Helvin) and captures the spirit and elegance of his times with his refreshingly simple approach and razor-sharp eye.
He is also the man whose life and work inspired one of the cult movies of the sixties, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, and who has constantly travelled the globe either with the most beautiful models or chronicling the contemporary reality of Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Vietnam, Afghanistan and other countries with ground-breaking reportages.
Above all, Bailey is a romantic with a delightful sense of humour approaching his 73rd year and showing no sign of slowing up. Director Jérôme de Missolz shuttles with him from his London studio to his country home in Devon, SW England, where, surrounded by family and friends, he continues to create one of the most varied and pertinent collections of any modern artist.
Featuring interviews with art critic Martin Harrison, Bailey's former wife Catherine Deneuve, his current wife of over twenty years Catherine Dyer, and his close friend Jerry Hall, Jérôme de Missolz's documentary is an engaging portrait of this very private man who bared the soul of the swinging sixties and seventies with his photographs and films. Grounded, honest, open and ferociously creative, Bailey makes art the way Count Basie played jazz: Four beats to the bar and no cheating.