David Wojnarowicz

AIDS victims and activists cope with hardship and society’s ignorance.

Brutally abused by his parents, teenage Thomas finds comfort in associating with a film director who is making a documentary about physical child abuse. The two fall in love, and the elder is faced with the decision of either running away with Thomas or focusing on his career and thereby letting the boy possibly be beaten to death.

A crumbling pier, its walls covered with graffiti and erotic frescoes reminiscent of pagan Pompeii, the locus of the seduction rituals of men longing for men, is the focus of this meditation on gay cruising at the height of sexual freedom before AIDS. Shot in 1982, this is the first segment of a film capturing the life, death, and rebirth of the legendary “sex piers” over the last three decades.

In the midst of the AIDS crisis, a young man from the suburbs moves to the big city of New York and ends up working as a hustler.

A fan tries to get an artist's attention by literally coming apart.

An oral history of Artists Space, the legendary New York artists organization. Told through the voices of the artists, critics and curators who formed it, the film is narrated by voiceover culled from 30 hours of archival cassette tape interviews over a 45 year period. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Mike Kelley, Hito Steyerl and David Wojnarowicz walk us through the decades. A formally-experimental and raucously-told chronology composed of rare archival documentation, The Business of Thought... is a reminder of the radical potential of the arts and the importance of collective, cultural spaces.

A collage-like, incisive look at the life of writer, painter and thinker David Wojnarowicz, whose powerful, unapologetic way of seeing the world gave voice to queer rights at a critical time in US history.

A series of short films by Richard Kern: Stray Dogs, Woman At The Wheel, Thrust In Me, & I Hate You Now.

Loosely based on an infamous 1984 Long Island murder case involving Satan-worshiping, teenage drug freaks (Knights of the Black Circle), David Wojnarowicz and Tommy Turner’s Where Evil Dwells is a low-budget D.I.Y. movie that walks the jagged lines between splatter flick, experimental film and transgressive art. The original footage was destroyed in a fire and the only footage that survived is this 28 minute preview that was put together for the Downtown New York Film Festival in 1985.

Promises: Through Congress is a collaboration between Julie Mehretu, electronic music composer Floating Points aka Sam Shepherd, and filmmaker Trevor Tweeten. This 46-minute film features Mehretu’s expansive painting Congress (2003) and Promises (Luaka Bop, 2021), the acclaimed album from Floating Points and jazz titan Pharoah Sanders featuring the London Symphony Orchestra. Filmed on location at The Broad in Los Angeles.

In the summer of 1989 Marion, David and François Pain took a camera with them to the Adirondacks lakes region of New York State. Passing it from hand to hand they captured a video diary of a vacation spent together in freedom, creativity, love and melancholy. "Every day, the group filmed each other, experimenting with spontaneous, intimate moments. The camera moves between them, emotions are exchanged along with it. More than just documentation, the film reveals the way they looked at each other, created together, and made space for one another —friendship and collaboration as a tender, furious act of witnessing. David Wojnarowicz had known since 1988 that he had AIDS. In Summer 89, Marion’s eye is that of a friend, imbuing David’s gestures with memory of the love and friendship they shared." ~ Christina Demetriou

Experimental short film that explores themes of religion, violence, and gender/masculinity.

Elizabeth bristles at the religious directives of her parents, asserting her right to personhood outside demure hairstyles and turkey dinners, constructing voodoo dolls and entertaining other manners of dark drawing in her dank emo-den. When confronted with the humanity and hypocrisy of her tormentors, the young antihero vanquishes their belief systems (and bodies) asserting, "You killed me first!"

Listen to This is a fragment of collective memory that finds critical relevance in contemporary Queer discourse. Tom Rubnitz weaves narration, image, and a form of temporality, dislocated from ‘real time’, into a video where artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz’s loss and anger is palpable.

Recreated from existing Super-8 films and audio collage by David Wojnarowicz.

Beautiful People was one of the last films David Wojnarowicz made before his death. The film follows Jesse Hultberg as he makes himself up in drag and ventures out onto the streets of New York, then beyond the city limits to a quiet lakeside.

Unfinished David Wojnarowicz film that was salvaged by Marion Scemama from Fales Library.

Carlo McCormick was invited to curate an East Village Art show at a gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Filmmaker Tessa Hughes-Freeland took filmic evidence of the infamous exhibition that featured downtown artists such as David Wojnarowicz, Marilyn Minter, Luis Frangella and more painting naughty murals while on acid.

The series of five videos Collaborative Film Collection made in collaboration with Marion Scemama in 1989 is emblematic of Wojnarowicz's artistic practice, it unfolds through performance, films, photographs, texts and paintings. Taking a highly subjective point of departure he shares poetic and moving moments, moving through the material until his voice achieves a universal dimension.

Phil Zwickler interviews David Wojnarowicz about a NEA project grant for a gallery show.