Bart's younger brother, Brian De Palma, had assisted Bart in making an experimental film in 1959, titled Gray Rain, while Bart was attending Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Eleven years later, Bart assisted Brian in making Hi, Mom! (1970), and went on to work with Brian on Obsession (1976) and Femme Fatale (2002).

Bart's son, Cameron De Palma (who had appeared in Brian De Palma's Carrie), posted about his father last week on Facebook:

Barton De Palma, my father, passed away last friday in our home at 12:40pm, a couple of days after his 86th birthday. It has been an honor to care for him these months of joy and sadness and connection. He floated away gently, surrounded by his beloveds. Bart was always chasing and creating beauty, preparing for new adventures, making new friends. Until his liver decreed otherwise last year, he never grew old. I got to see this guy build televisions from scratch, train his telescope on the apollo craft as it went by, create new worlds on canvas, score touchdowns, have a family twice, photograph nebulas, scuba, assemble computers, become a gourmet chef, work in the movies, teach overseas, you get the idea…Unfillable shoes. Great love and respect for my incredible wife Dana, who befriended Bart and went above and beyond to hold us all up with love and grace ♥️.

In the book Double De Palma by Susan Dworkin, Brian is quoted, "I knew a lot about still photography from my science fair days. And I guess it was my brother Bart, he was taking a filmmaking course at Washington and Lee, and we made a little film at the shore."

HI, MOM!

On Hi, Mom!, Bart is credited as part of the N.I.T. Journal crew (along with Bettina Kugel/Tina Hirsch and two others), and he is also credited as still photographer.

OBSESSION

For Obsession, Bart painted the portraits that are seen in the film, and he also took the photos that are used in the film's opening slideshow.

FEMME FATALE

For Femme Fatale, Bart makes a cameo as a security guard, and was also a visual consultant - he created the "Déjà Vu" poster of Rebecca-as-Ophelia, and took 3200 photos during the making of the film to make up the photo mural seen in the apartment of Antonio Banderas' character. (Interestingly, Déjà Vu was also the working title of Obsession.) Bart appears on screen in one of the Laurent Bouzereau special feature documentaries on the Femme Fatale DVD:

My job on Femme Fatale was to produce the photographic work that Antonio was going to create in the course of the film. When Antonio read the script, he was bothered by the fact that the character was a paparazzi, something that he apparently has considerable dislike for. The interesting thing was, once he saw the montage that we were creating for his character, he said to Brian, “Now I understand. Now I understand what this person is, and who this person is.” I figured out when I was done, I shot 3200 photographs of this location. And I must say that many people on the production crew bent over backwards to work on this picture just because they wanted the opportunity to work with somebody who was going to make it technically interesting for them, and interesting visually.