ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED
By Laura Poitras
About the Film
One of the most important and influential artists of her generation, Nan Goldin has revolutionised the art of photography through her honest and deeply personal portraiture. Since the 1970s, her work has explored notions of gender and definitions of normality. By documenting her life and the lives of the friends around her, Goldin gives a voice and visibility to her communities. The images of her “extended family” became the subject of her seminal slideshow and first book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985). This work, along with The Other Side, Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, and Memory Lost, as well as the legacy of her late sister Barbara, frames All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras’ moving portrait of Goldin’s life, practice and activism.
Made in close collaboration with the artist, the documentary explores the inherently subversive quality of her art, seen especially in footage chronicling her responses to the HIV/AIDS and opioid crises. After her own ordeal with OxyContin addiction, Goldin founded P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017. It is an organisation that advocates for harm reduction and overdose prevention, and seeks to hold the billionaire Sackler family accountable for manufacturing and marketing the highly addictive painkiller through their corporation Purdue Pharma. To call attention to their responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, all while being celebrated for their ample donations to the arts, P.A.I.N. staged several powerful actions at renowned museums that had accepted Sackler funds and named exhibition halls after them.
Poitras made this film under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, and took nearly two years to conduct a series of audio interviews with Goldin that often touched on very painful and intimate subjects—these would form the narrative backbone of her film. Weaving together stories from Goldin’s childhood, rebellious adolescence, and immersion in New York City’s thriving underground arts scene, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed captures a personal experience of historic moments. Most of all, it reveals the deep compassion of an artist compelled to end the stigmas carried by many marginalised communities.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival (2022).
Explore Other Festival Sections
Opening Film
Magellan is an intimate portrait of the 16th century Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, starring Gael García Bernal in the titular role.
Art History, Co-authored
Art History, Co-authored presents films that explore seminal moments in art and film history.
Artist Films
Presenting films made by artists, this year includes an emphasis on early documentaries by Southeast Asian practitioners and a full-length movie independently made during the Marcos regime in the Philippines. National Gallery Singapore commissioned the digital restoration of two artists’ films on 16mm, Virgilio “Pandy” Aviado’s 1978 Footages and Briccio Santos’ Damortis, which are world premiering at Painting with Light.
Exhibition Readings
Exhibition Readings presents film programmes conceived in response to the art in the Gallery’s ongoing exhibitions.
Southeast Asian Shorts
Southeast Asian Shorts presents short films on the stories of Southeast Asia. This year’s programme is co-curated by independent programmer Viknesh Kobinathan, and festival curator Pauline Soh.
Movement Pieces
Movement Pieces celebrates the visual poetry found in moving image art. It features short films that convey meaning through non-verbal modes of communication, like gesture and musicality, in lieu of dialogue.
Closing
We Are Toast is an expanded cinema performance by Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen that utilises multiple 16mm film projectors to create a live film.