#sackler

Addiction also drives Laura Poitras documentary portrait of photographer Nan Goldin, who ran away from a repressive dysfunctional family (after the suicide of her brilliant and beloved sister) and dove into the bohemian demimonde of Boston and New York chronicling the drug addicts, queers, drag queens, hookers, sex workers etc. of lower bohemia. As a photographer she smashed the difference between artist and subject showing the underground denizens as her makeshift family (and during the 80s and 90s AIDS crisis, the decimation of that family). The film tells her story but intercuts it with her current struggle against the drug corporation Purdue Pharma over their marketing of oxycontin which helped turn her into an opioid addict and nearly killed her. Her activism is focused on pressuring the most prestigious museums in the art world (many of which have hosted her work) to reject the endowments of the Sackler family, major art philanthropists who also control Purdue, as well as removing their names from museum exhibits. Poitras takes what could have been a messy mélange of themes and turns it into a strong depiction of an artist’s turn to activism. By the end when Goldin makes the Pharma board listen on Zoom to hours of testimony from victims of the opioid epidemic (you can see the blood drain from their face) the story seems to be one of a piece – the lifelong effort by the artist to make us look at the people who are supposed to be invisible and to see them.

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