Lau­ra Poitras: ​‘I hope the audi­ence comes out with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world’

Watch­ing films all-day, every day at a film fes­ti­val can mean they all blur into a carousel of images until – sud­den­ly – one cuts through and you’re in a daze out­side after­wards search­ing col­leagues’ eyes for signs they are equal­ly moved. So it was with All The Beau­ty and the Blood­shed, a por­trait of the artist Nan Goldin by the doc­u­men­tar­i­an Lau­ra Poitras, which did move my col­leagues, yes, and also Julianne Moore’s jury which award­ed it the 2022 Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Gold­en Lion.

Poitras is no slouch when it comes to secur­ing indus­try plau­dits for her work, as she has under her belt an Acad­e­my Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary for 2015’s inves­tiga­tive nerve-jan­gler, Cit­i­zen­four. It’s a film about America’s most want­ed whistle­blow­er, Edward Snow­den, which com­bines the ten­sion of a fic­tion­al spy thriller with an inti­ma­cy born of the Hong Kong hotel room set­ting where she, Snow­den, and the jour­nal­ist, Glenn Green­wald, worked to get his sto­ry out while under siege from US intel­li­gence agen­cies. Poitras had been put on a ter­ror­ist watch­list after her 2005 film My Coun­try, My Coun­try about the first Iraqi elec­tions under US occu­pa­tion, and embed­ding with Snow­den only inten­si­fied the sur­veil­lance that is now part of her life.

To be an ene­my of the state can mark one as a friend to artists. At a break­fast arranged by the Ger­man artist, Hito Stey­erl, Poitras met Goldin and the lat­ter told the for­mer about the work of PAIN (Pre­scrip­tion Addic­tion Inter­ven­tion Now). After a near-death expe­ri­ence, Goldin found­ed this advo­ca­cy group to respond to the opi­oid cri­sis, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing the Sack­ler fam­i­ly for man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing the high­ly addic­tive and poten­tial­ly-fatal painkiller, Oxy­Con­tin. PAIN had been film­ing their direct actions in gal­leries that bore the Sack­ler fam­i­ly name with the aim of strip­ping away attempts at white­wash­ing their ques­tion­able legacy.

The two women joined forces for a tow­er­ing piece of work whose emo­tion­al pow­er sneaks up amid com­pelling vignettes from Goldin’s life, pho­tog­ra­phy, and activism. Poitras talked to us about the dif­fer­ence between col­lab­o­ra­tors (like Goldin) and adver­saries (like the Sack­lers) shame, art, pol­i­tics, the late artist and activist David Woj­narow­icz, the rela­tion­ship between the AIDS and the opi­oid crises, and how they land­ed on that title.

LWlies: The film con­tains so much mate­r­i­al from the past and from the present. You’ve got the bio­graph­i­cal ele­ment, the activism ele­ment, the opi­oid cri­sis, the AIDS cri­sis, and you’ve got these incred­i­bly joy­ful times. You’re talk­ing about the grotes­query of Amer­i­ca, but there’s the warmth from queer com­mu­ni­ty bonds. So how did you approach bring­ing that mate­r­i­al togeth­er with­in a narrative? 

Poitras: It need­ed to have a lot of joy and life­force and beau­ty. It was always going to have a lot of dark­ness. We had amaz­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors in the edit. Joe Bini, who works with Lynne Ram­say, is also a direc­tor and amaz­ing sto­ry­teller. He had a vision for the inner sto­ry and the struc­ture of the film. Then I col­lab­o­rat­ed with Amy Foot in New York, a real­ly bril­liant edi­tor of ver­ité obser­va­tion­al footage. I always want­ed it to be a por­trait of Nan that reflects the inti­ma­cy, and then the polit­i­cal impact of her work. And that it wouldn’t choose one or the other.

Nan talks about want­i­ng the peo­ple in her pho­tographs to be proud of what they see. Do you have a sim­i­lar impulse?

I love that Nan doc­u­ments peo­ple that she knows and cares about. I do share that. With this film, it was real­ly impor­tant to tell her sto­ry with a pro­found sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty and care. Hope­ful­ly we did that, and it’s very much a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nan. I mean, it’s a film that Nan start­ed and, as you know, Nan’s been beau­ti­ful­ly telling her sto­ries through­out her life. I felt this enor­mous sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty and inad­e­qua­cy. I was incred­i­bly anx­ious to not fuck it up. I love when she describes that she would show peo­ple pho­tographs, and if they didn’t like some­thing that they could tear it up. That kind of non-attach­ment, but also Nan has devot­ed her life to her art. She cares, but also wants the peo­ple that she pho­tographs to be proud.

What is the dif­fer­ence between see­ing the per­son you’re doc­u­ment­ing as a col­lab­o­ra­tor ver­sus see­ing them as a subject?

It’s case by case. I don’t real­ly use the lan­guage of ​‘sub­ject’ in general.

What lan­guage do you use?

Pro­tag­o­nist. Or some­thing like that with a lot of agency. I’m very trans­par­ent about the work that I’m doing. Hope­ful­ly, it’s always my vision as a film­mak­er, and I’m respon­si­ble for all the short­com­ings and all the deci­sions, but I want some­thing truth­ful to be there. If I was mak­ing a film about a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, I wouldn’t feel the need to be col­lab­o­ra­tive with them. If the sub­ject is some­body who’s abus­ing pow­er, it’s much more adversarial.

But in this film, which has so much per­son­al detail about Nan’s life, it had to be a col­lab­o­ra­tion. She had to have a process of being able to review things and do more inter­views if we didn’t get enough depth so it didn’t tell the whole truth. We worked on it, we showed her the rough cut, and then there were sec­tions where she want­ed to do more inter­views. So, for instance, when she describes Bri­an, the man who beat her, it was impor­tant that it also had a love sto­ry com­po­nent to it. Because it didn’t just hap­pen that she was with him and then he was vio­lent. There was love and that makes it more com­pli­cat­ed, right, when it’s framed as a ten­sion between auton­o­my and inde­pen­dence, rather than just an act of vio­lence that comes out of nowhere. Only Nan can bring that truth to the sto­ry. But if the Sack­lers asked me to take their images out of the pic­ture, I would say, ​‘no’. I mean I would say, ​‘Fuck you’.

Have the Sack­lers seen the film?

I can only assume their lawyers have. I can’t imag­ine that one of the seats in Venice didn’t hold some­body who works for the Sack­lers. The film suc­ceeds in being influ­enced by Nan’s val­ues because her work is so inti­mate, and the film ends up being so inti­mate as well. I’m think­ing of hear­ing the 911 call made by the fam­i­ly whose son died from tak­ing OxyContin.

What is hap­pen­ing for you when you bear wit­ness with your cam­era to such moments?

There are real­ly com­pli­cat­ed sets of ques­tions and ethics around what to rep­re­sent and how to rep­re­sent it, and what is the pur­pose of rep­re­sent­ing. I’m cer­tain­ly not some­body who wants to gra­tu­itous­ly show any kind of vio­lence. We all had to feel that fea­tur­ing the moment you ref­er­enced was not going to cause harm. We did speak to the fam­i­ly who played the 911 call; we spoke to the par­ents who lost their child. So, in the film, when they con­front the Sack­lers, dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies say what hap­pened, and they start­ed theirs with the 911 call. She (the moth­er) chose to do that and then she put it on the inter­net after. The fam­i­ly wants peo­ple to hear this, like, they want peo­ple to under­stand the suf­fer­ing that peo­ple have been through. They want the crim­i­nal­i­ty of the Sack­ler fam­i­ly to be exposed. They feel it’s a way to hon­our their son who died from tak­ing OxyContin.

And there’s always the ques­tion of ​‘how do you reach peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly?’ I don’t know if there’s any words you could write that would have the same impact as that 911 call which is basi­cal­ly a moth­er scream­ing. We felt, I felt, and the film team felt that it com­mu­ni­cat­ed so much about the tragedy of this epi­dem­ic, and this over­dose cri­sis through this mother’s act of shar­ing this that we felt it was real­ly impor­tant, even though painful. My hope was always that the audi­ence for the film doesn’t feel like it’s enter­tain­ment, but actu­al­ly comes out with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world. And maybe that dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive can lead to some kind of change.

That also con­nects with the line in the film, ​“The wrong things are kept pri­vate, and it destroys peo­ple.” What is it about dis­clos­ing some­thing that makes it less harmful?

I think that Nan feels real­ly strong­ly that one of the themes that recurs in her work is des­tig­ma­ti­sa­tion. If she shares her expe­ri­ence with addic­tion or being bat­tered… First of all, it’s painful for her, it doesn’t come easy. It’s excru­ci­at­ing, actu­al­ly. I’ve seen it as she makes her own work. It’s not like there’s any joy in that process, but I think she feels strong­ly that it helps oth­ers to find their place in the world. Peo­ple say that about Nan’s work all the time. Young queer peo­ple see her pho­tographs, and they go, ​‘Oh, my God, there’s a world for me.’ It con­nects with people.

She talks about her addic­tion or med­ica­tion-assist­ed treat­ment and buprenor­phine – that’s real­ly brave and maybe oth­er peo­ple who are strug­gling feel that they’re not alone. A lot of the strug­gle is around shame and stig­ma that’s mis­placed, right? Like, the shame and stig­ma belongs on the bil­lion­aire prof­i­teers. Let’s make them real­ly, real­ly uncom­fort­able. For peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing, how can this film or the work that PAIN does around harm-reduc­tion help to keep peo­ple alive? Some­thing that Nan has done through­out her life is to face things with full truth, even if it’s painful – and that’s a good thing.

Do you feel art and pol­i­tics can be the same thing?

I don’t think they’re the same thing, per­son­al­ly. I don’t speak for Nan. I make films to make films. Yes, I have a lot of beliefs in terms of polit­i­cal per­spec­tives but that’s not an alter­na­tive to activism. I also protest on the street and there are oth­er types of things you can do as an activist. I do think that no artist works in a polit­i­cal vac­u­um and some­times the work can – and should – spill over like with [the cur­rent­ly-incar­cer­at­ed Iran­ian film­mak­er] Jafar Panahi or David Woj­narow­icz. He’s one of the most extra­or­di­nary artists, and his writ­ing is so bril­liant. Yes, it’s also rage about the soci­ety that he lives in. But the writ­ing is great not because of his rage, just because the writ­ing is great.

What is that bal­ance between a clear-cut com­mu­ni­ca­tion project, where you want to make it explic­it­ly clear what your pro­tag­o­nists’ motives are, but as a lover of cin­e­ma, and you want to make some­thing as an artist in your own right? How do those ele­ments bal­ance out?

Dur­ing dia­logue, often­times when I start a film, I have cer­tain ideas about what I’m inter­est­ed in, and what I hope to do with it, but then those ideas meet real­i­ty, they meet peo­ple, and then you have to change because it’s not my job to impose a world­view on the films, but to be recep­tive to what is hap­pen­ing in front of me. For instance, going back to Cit­i­zen­four, we were in email con­tact for six months before I met Edward Snow­den in Hong Kong. He nev­er told me any­thing about his biog­ra­phy, so I could only imag­ine in my head who was I going to meet. The per­son was telling me what they knew, so I was like, ​‘Okay, if some­body knows this lev­el of detail about what the NSA is doing, and its mis­deeds, this has to be a senior lev­el person.’

I sort of said, Okay, I’m going to meet some­body who’s not 29! When Glenn (Green­wald), and I had this ren­dez-vous point, and he came up, and it was in a T‑shirt and jeans. I just thought, ​‘Oh this is not good news. They’re gonna kill us all. This is not going to end well.’ Because I mis­tak­en­ly didn’t see the fact that, because of his courage and his youth, he’s risk­ing more, right? I had already been tar­get­ed. The US gov­ern­ment had already put me on a ter­ror­ist watch list. So I just felt like the CIA is def­i­nite­ly going to haul us in, but I realised once I stepped back, the fact that some­body so young was risk­ing so much, prob­a­bly reached young peo­ple in a way that had maybe had more impact.

When you’re in the eye of the storm and so embed­ded in a sit­u­a­tion that is total­ly unpre­dictable, such as being in that hotel room in Hong Kong, how much is all the stuff that the film lat­er explains is hap­pen­ing in your head at the time?

Par­tic­u­lar­ly in that sit­u­a­tion, I’ve nev­er been under stress like that. My heart was beat­ing out of my chest. I was just wait­ing for the CIA to knock the door down and arrest us all. I do think I dis­as­so­ci­at­ed at some point. It was lucky that I’d made enough films that I could try to be there and try to cap­ture what was hap­pen­ing because the poten­tial con­se­quences were so ter­ri­fy­ing. Edward was so calm, and he was almost try­ing to calm us down. In ret­ro­spect, I think, men­tal­ly he had resigned him­self to any poten­tial out­come. So he was on the oth­er side. He was in some sort of ​‘pre­pared for any­thing’ state.

I want­ed to read this David Woj­narow­icz line, just because it makes every hair on my body stand up. ​“I wake up every day in this killing machine called Amer­i­ca, and I’m car­ry­ing this rage, like a blood-filled egg.” How has the USA changed since he wrote that in the ​’80s?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the US has not changed. It was so impor­tant to bring up what hap­pened with AIDS and put it in jux­ta­po­si­tion with the over­dose cri­sis because they’re both exam­ples of the utter fail­ure of soci­ety to hold peo­ple account­able and to pro­vide basic needs. David Woj­narow­icz was talk­ing about not hav­ing ade­quate health care dur­ing the AIDS cri­sis. We’re still a coun­try that doesn’t have health­care for cit­i­zens. How can a wealthy coun­try not meet these basic needs of cit­i­zens? How is it that a bil­lion­aire fam­i­ly can get away with unspeak­able crimes and nev­er be held accountable?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s an all-too-Amer­i­can sto­ry – the impuni­ty and fail­ure of the gov­ern­ment, and this whole gross phil­an­thropy where you give your mon­ey and you get a tax write-off and your name is put on walls and muse­ums, and nobody ques­tions where that mon­ey comes from. Hope­ful­ly, that’s over. One thing that Nan should feel real­ly proud of is that every board mem­ber of every muse­um in the US is ner­vous that they’re going to be next. That’s good shame. That’s where the shame belongs.

The title for the film, All the Beau­ty and the Blood­shed, is revealed as a phrase with­in Nan Goldin’s sister’s psy­chi­atric records. When you hap­pened across it, did you know it would be the title?

I did. It hits. We were look­ing for a title – I always felt like, ​‘It will come’. We were deep into the edit­ing and then Nan shared Barbara’s records. I read it and [sighs] woah. The full quote is her respond­ing to a Rorschach test and it’s longer. ​“She sees the future and all the beau­ty and the blood­shed.” I went to Nan. She felt imme­di­ate­ly that it was the right title. It came from her sis­ter. It’s from the source mate­r­i­al and embod­ies the fact that the film is a cel­e­bra­tion of peo­ple who resist accept­ing the sta­tus quo.

Nan is always say­ing, ​“We weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly polit­i­cal, we just didn’t give a shit what soci­ety thought we should be doing.” Hope­ful­ly it’s a cel­e­bra­tion of that. Hope­ful­ly it tells the audi­ence that it’s not a biopic – I’m not a fan of biopics – and that it’s big­ger. It’s about Nan and about the Sack­lers but it’s hope­ful­ly also about the need to com­mu­ni­cate, about find­ing your voice, about cru­el soci­eties but also about change and what peo­ple can do when they join forces. It’s also about impuni­ty and tragedy – there’s so much tragedy in the film.