Peter Hujar’s Day
An American biographical film in which Ira Sachs (Passages) portrays a day in the life of the New York photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) in 1974.
In 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz and photographer Peter Hujar tape-recorded a conversation in her New York apartment. The topic of the afternoon was 24 hours in the life of the famously uncompromising Hujar, who was regarded as one of the most important characters in downtown New York’s cultural scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
In his new film, which is set entirely in Linda’s Manhattan apartment, Ira Sachs freely and imaginatively recreates that long-ago afternoon and the discursive exchange between two singular individuals. The photographer vividly describes his interactions with leading cultural figures of the day, including Allen Ginsberg and Susan Sontag, as well as the challenges of living on limited financial resources in 1970s New York. Peter Hujar’s Day is a rumination on both an artist’s life and time itself. Thanks to the subtle performances of Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, the film develops into a moving tribute to creativity, human connection and the significance of life’s little moments.