ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED documentary directed by Laura Poitras is on HBO and worth viewing. I felt nauseated viewing the despair and the tentacles of agony that Oxycontin wrested on those who were attempting to avoid pain and instead were engulfed by a "vampire" drug that devoured the essence of one's being eviscerating mind and body.
We glimpse Nan Goldin from early childhood to the warrior activist she has become through the interweaving of deeply personal photos and slideshows of friends who became the family she yearned for. As a young girl Nan Goldin was terribly shy having lost to suicide her 18 years old sister - the one person in her biological family who she adored - the one who had the will to crash through the confines of suburban conformity.
Goldin speaks about her own Opioid addiction which she vividly describes as almost taking her life. Instead, it galvanized her to fight to make Purdue Pharma/Sackler Family pay for their greed and voracious propaganda through their promotion of Oxycontin, trafficking an epidemic of death into billions of dollars in corporate profits.
This is also a journey into the early East Village art and nightlife scenes and the devastation of so many young people to AIDS - another epidemic that was ignored for many years. Moving and heroic, I was enlightened and saddened by this film.
