All The Beauty And The Bloodshed [2022]

 The celebrated photographer Nan Goldin’s fascinating life has been one of profound personal tragedies, furious defiance, feminist agency, civil disobedience, queer experiences, eclectic underground and counterculture associations, and active participation in anti-establishmentarian communities. These, in turn, influenced her art – which was, at once, gritty, non-conformist, political, sexual, powerful, and above all, intensely personal – and shaped her activism. Laura Poitras’ magnetic documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – filled with urgency, ferocity, angst, immediacy and formal fluidity – captured Goldin’s polychromatic shades through a blend of thrilling reportage, freewheeling memoir, vivid art exhibits, engrossing zeitgeist and melancholic reflections. That Poitras herself has fearlessly critiqued the state machinery and defied the system with her documentaries – which too have existed at the crossroads of art and activism – paved way for a symbiotic collaboration between the two women. It’s a matter of marvel that the different elements of the mosaic combined with such lucidity despite so much ground that it covered – the repressive familial and suburban milieu in which Goldin grew up; the haunting memories of her sister’s suicide; her dizzying friendships with rebellious individuals, radical artists and social misfits living on the margins; her experimentations with drugs, sexuality and subaltern circuits; her journey as a trailblazing artist who merged avant-garde form and subversive undercurrents with rare intimacy; her addiction to Oxycontin that nearly killed her; and her blazing activism to bring the hideous Sackler family to account for their culpability in the opioid epidemic. The protests that she led at the Met, Guggenheim and Louvre – for taking donations from the Slackers and naming galleries after them – provided for rousing moments, as did her dazzling photographic installations accompanied by terrific music hand-picked by Goldin.

Director: Laura Poitras

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Biopic

Language: English

Country: US