Peter Hujar's Day (Drama)
Director: Ira Sachs
Producer: Jordan Drake,Jonah Disend
Screenwriter: Ira Sachs
Cinematographer: Alex Ashe
Editor: Affonso Gonçalves
Production Designer: Stephen Phelps
Key Cast: Rebecca Hall,Ben Whishaw
Ben Whishaw reunites with Passages (MIFF 2023) director Ira Sachs for another revealing account of the queer experience, this time turning the lens on a brilliant photographer.
Peter Hujar was a gifted photographer. A contemporary of Susan Sontag and Andy Warhol, he had a particular fondness for downtown New York’s diverse inhabitants, and captured the likes of Allen Ginsberg for The New York Times. On 19 December 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz decided to interview him about a day in his life; the material was meant for a larger project about artists at work that never eventuated. Over a decade later, Hujar was tragically claimed by HIV/AIDS. The tape of their conversation was lost; but in 2019, a transcript was discovered in Hujar’s archives.
Set entirely within an East Village apartment, Ira Sachs’s latest love letter to the queer New York of yesteryear focuses on a luminary whose legacy was not recognised until long after his death. Shot in nostalgic 16mm, it features Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall (Christine, MIFF 2016) acting out the transcript of Hujar and Rosenkrantz’s exchange, their candid chemistry heightened by the lack of previous rehearsals. Screening at Sundance and Berlin, this intimately drawn two-hander portrays the bond between adoring friends and the genius of a creative flame snuffed out too soon.
“The picture revels in its spareness, its warm simplicity. It starts off as an elevation of the quotidian but transforms into something sadder and more reflective … a masterpiece.” – Vulture