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Artist, outsider, writer, queer activist. David Wojnarowicz was all of these things and more, as Chris McKim captures in his fiery documentary.
David Wojnarowicz’s short life burned with outrage and defiance; he died of AIDS in 1992, aged only 37. Rising to prominence in the anti-establishment art scene of New York’s East Village alongside Peter Hujar, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Wojnarowicz made radical, multidisciplinary work that critiqued what he saw as a diseased America shaped by conservatism and indifference. A recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum has cemented Wojnarowicz’s place as a major American visionary – and this comprehensive and very moving film reinforces why.
Drawing on Wojnarowicz’s extensive archive of journals, photos, video and voice recordings (including answering-machine messages), McKim (Out of Iraq) constructs a richly vivid collage that not only mirrors the artist’s own visual style but is anchored on his point of view. Also featuring interviews with such figures as Fran Lebowitz, Nan Goldin and Richard Kern alongside Wojnarowicz’s family members and former lovers, this is a haunting elegy to a truly revolutionary, remarkable cultural figure.
“A wondrous, intimate, and often outrage-inspiring biographical portrait of the artist and his times.” – The New Yorker