“All the beauty and the bloodshed”, a first documentary on photographer Nan Goldin, awarded a Golden Lion in Venice

It was by photographing the daily life of her family and loved ones in the 80s and 90s in New York that Nan Goldin challenged the credos of glamorous photography of the time. To the artist has been added the activist who denounces the production of opiate drugs which are wreaking havoc in the United States. This cause, at the crossroads of art and public health, is at the heart of All the beauty and the bloodshed which hits theaters Wednesday, March 15.

Opium

Before addressing Nan Goldin’s fight against Purdue Pharma laboratories, Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, Oscar for best documentary in 2015) revisits the artist’s closely linked life and work. She draws from her slideshows that cross the marginal, gay and festive Brooklyn of the 80s and 90s. Opiates circulate and Nan Goldin emancipates herself from them with OxyContin, an opioid to which she becomes addicted again.

The mixture of the drug and heroin has caused an unprecedented wave of overdoses in the United States, known as the opioid crisis. When Nan Goldin learns that the Sackler family’s Purdue Pharma laboratory is blocking an overdose prevention drug, the artist creates the PAIN collective (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), which advocates the reduction of health risks and the prevention of overdoses. Its actions will then multiply throughout the world.

“Art washing”

The wealthy Sackler family is recognized as a great patron of the arts, through its partnerships with the greatest museums in the world, the Louvre, the Moma, the Guggenheim… For Nan Goldin, the Sacklers have created an “artwashing” to get rid of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Its main action is now to deconstruct the image of the Sackler family as a patron prince of the arts, and to exclude it from world art institutions.

This merciless fight is bearing fruit and the Golden Lion of Venice, which has returned to film, is participating in it, after the distances that the greatest museums in the world have taken with the Sacklers. Patchwork of an artist’s life turned whistleblower and activist, All the beauty and the bloodshed demonstrates how much the image of the artist cloistered in his ivory tower is over. Nan Goldin’s photographic act revealed a recognized LGBT marginality, then the “artwashing” that was hidden behind the opiate crisis. Two revelations, with at heart and as common denominator, the integrity of art.

The sheet

Gender : Documentary
Director: Laura Poitras
Country : UNITED STATES
Duration : 1h57
Exit : March 15 2023
Distributer : Distribution Pyramid