Master of intimate drama Ira Sachs uses a lost cassette and a recovered transcript to recreate a conversation that took place in 1974 between photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz. The afternoon they spent together centered on reconstructing 24 hours in the life of Hujar, a gifted and uncompromising queer artist who was a central figure in the New York scene of the 1970s and 1980s, but remained largely unknown to the mainstream art world at the time of his death from AIDS. As is often the case, his photographic studies are now valued for their stark elegance and emotional intensity, as are his later, darker-toned works, which, while soberly documenting the devastation AIDS wrought on his community, resonate with those of younger artist David Wojnarowicz. Set entirely in Linda’s Manhattan apartment, this chamber piece freely and inventively recreates the sparkling, discursive exchange between two seasoned cultural workers, too cynical to believe in the romantic myth of vocation, yet too weary to resist its pull. Or perhaps they’re just having too much fun.
As the photographer vividly recounts his encounters with leading cultural figures of the time – such as Susan Sontag, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg – and reflects on the hardships of surviving amid the chronic financial insecurity of the arts sector, his gentle nature and subtle humor unfold into a meditation on the precarious nature of an artist’s life. Peter Hujar’s Day is part gossip session, part wistful reflection on the unequal realities of creative work, where there’s money for some, but not for others. It is a Proustian experiment that seeks to resurrect the lost reality of a specific time and place, moment by moment, inch by inch, word by word. There are two people in a room, talking, and as time goes by, nothing happens – or everything happens. Because sometimes, ordinary moments of everyday life take on a monumental depth and startling intensity.
Awards and festivals:
Sundance Film Festival (2025) – world premiere; Berlinale (2025) – Panorama, international premiere
Ira Sachs is a New York-based American director known for a number of critically acclaimed independent films – Little Men, Love Is Strange, Forty Shades of Blue etc. – which have been screened and awarded at major film festivals, i.e. Sundance, Berlinale, Cannes and Toronto. A 2013 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Sachs’ works are part of the permanent collections of MoMA and the Whitney Museum of Art. Sachs is also the founder and executive director of Queer/Art, New York-based non-profit arts organization that offers support to LGBTQ artists across various disciplines and generations.
