DEPTFORD CINEMA FILM SCREENING: ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022) - FREE ENTRY

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (2022)

Free film, no booking.  Please arrive early as seating is limited.

Doors: 4.30pm   Film: 5pm

Refreshments available at the bar.

• Dir. Laura Poitras
• Year. 2022
• Country: United States
• Run-time: 122 mins
• Rating: 18

“Photograph’s like a flash of euphoria and it gave me a voice” says artist Nan Goldin as she looks back at her life documenting the life and loves of those around her - her friends in the New York LGBTQ community of the 80s and 90s.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed gives us beautiful photographic fragments from a lifetime of battles, moments of flamboyant joy, of intimacy, friendship and loss in a marginalised community. Most of the rare footage we see is gleaned from Nan Goldin’s archive, not only from her influential series of photographs, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, but also from her work in the sex industry and her documentation of the physical abuse from a partner. The revelation of power, the power of men over women, is at the heart of Nan’s motivation, but now her focus shifts to the power of big Pharma.

Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company owned by the Sackler family, is pursued by Nan and her activist friends in order to hold to account the pain profiteers responsible for the devastating opioid epidemic that has caused thousands of deaths in the US. Risking her career, she attacks the very institutions that exhibit her work - the Met, the Louvre, the Tate, the major art galleries who have all accepted their philanthropic donations, art washing the profits of these billionaires.

This cinematic collaboration between two fearless artists - Nan Goldin and Laura Poitras - has already received the accolade of Winner of Best Film at the 79th Venice Film Festival and is likely to be garnered with many other major awards. The brilliance of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed lies in the interlacing of its stirring subject of courageous activism with intimate conversations and tragic revelations from Nan. An emotional combination of the personal and the political makes this an extraordinary, unforgettable film.