This is a preview of a film featured in the 2025 Newburyport Documentary Film Festival.
I’ve always believed that you could throw a stone and hit a genius. That geniuses exist all around us, unaware even of themselves, and like a flower needs sunlight to blossom all they need is sunlight. I think a lot of geniuses will never be known because they went to school for their business major when they should have gone for molecular biology, or they would have been the Debussy of auto mechanics but they never picked up a tire iron. Genius might also depend on your idea of how low that threshold lies, but regardless of your definition or perception of genius, Gregory Gillespie was one.
The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie tracks Gregory from his childhood until his death, in both the professional and personal arenas which clearly overlapped–or maybe in his mind were never separate at all. In this deeply impactful documentary, I saw the very clear portrait of what it really means to be a tortured artist, someone grasping to communicate something that either he didn’t fully understand himself, or that the understanding was so transcendental that he could never find the words.
As a person of artistic disposition, this film felt close to home, and exposed me to one of the greatest artists I’m ashamed to say I had only a passing knowledge of, as well as his cadre of friends and family who were and are unnaturally gifted artists themselves. If you have any interest in the arts, or any interest in sociology, psychology, or how environments work to shape people, this is a must see. Beautifully filmed and plotted, rich with art, artists, and subject matter intimate to the subject himself, you’ll need to carve out a necessary 30 minutes post viewing to readjust to the world outside the theater.
Peter Neverette
The 21st-annual Newburyport Documentary Film Festival runs from September 26-28, 2025.
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