At the NYFF press conference following a screening of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, photographer Nan Goldin seemed as surprised as anyone that Laura Poitras included footage of her family story, weaving together decades of her artistic risk-taking. From the time that she left her childhood home in the suburbs for a life documenting a demimonde of friends, like herself, on a cultural fringe, she has harbored the memory of her sister, a rebel who taught Nan how to rebel. That rebellion led to activism. 

Poitras came on board to help complete a film project that began with some footage of Goldin and P.A.I.N. demonstrating. The group which she helped to found continues to challenge the opioid industry Nan Goldin barely survived, and now she wants to give voice to the thousands who died as a result of addiction: in particular, P.A.I.N targets the Sackler family who put their name on arts institutions in New York, Paris, London, etc., from the vast amounts of money they made through Purdue Pharma promoting drugs like oxycontin, and other pain killers they pushed as non-addictive.

 What makes this story so compelling is that everyone knows someone, has been to a funeral, has consoled parents of young people wasted in this disaster, the epidemic of our time. As the film points out, our economic system is set up so that those making billions exploiting the vulnerable—that is, all of us—prevail. Nan Goldin found a way to break through and achieved the removal of the Sackler name from any arts institution that owned her work including the Metropolitan Museum, Guggenheim, and Louvre.

But that’s not all. What the documentary shows is how the arts are marginalized in American culture: particularly resonant for me were her photos of young Cookie Mueller, including her open casket on display at St. Mark’s Church, the only time I have ever seen that space used as a church. Cookie, a writer and principal actor along with Divine in early John Waters films, died of AIDS, her story told here, a vital history. Photographer Peter Hujar, painter David Wojnarowicz –Goldin’s photos of the downtown art scene in NYC in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s are part of this story. Some survivors such as Sara Driver and Jim Jarmusch are glimpsed as well. Goldin’s work—she now makes slide shows, narratives comprised of her remarkable photos, fulfilling her dream since she was a teen, she laughs, to be called a filmmaker.