Robert De Niro and JR Collaborate on Short Film About the Actor's Artist Father

Robert De Niro and street artist JR have teamed up for a short film titled 'The Past Goes Fast,' produced by Aimé Leon Dore. The ten-minute film opens the doors of the studio of De Niro's father, Robert Henry De Niro Sr., an artist who died in 1993. De Niro Sr. was a painter, poet, and sculptor who studied under German Expressionist Hans Hofmann and attended Black Mountain College in Asheville. He married painter Virginia Admiral in 1942, and they moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where they were part of a circle including writers Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, playwright Tennessee Williams, and performer Valeska Gert. Their son Robert was born in 1943, but the couple separated soon after; De Niro Sr. later came out as gay. The film shows De Niro and JR in the studio, surrounded by canvases, diaries, and personal objects, interspersed with archival footage of the elder De Niro. The actor, usually private about his personal life, discusses his father's art and their relationship. The film aims to revive the reputation of an artist who was perhaps underappreciated by critics, and to reconstruct a paternal figure for the son. This is not the first collaboration between De Niro and JR; they previously worked on the short 'Ellis' about immigrants arriving in New York, written by Eric Roth and directed by JR, with De Niro as protagonist.