Nan Goldin – I rembember your face

Documentarian Sabine Lidl’s intimate portrait of New York photographer Nan Goldin is as uncompromising and unvarnished as the snapshots that have come to define Goldin as arguably one of the most influential, celebrated and controversial photographers of her generation. Goldin’s work was first exhibited in the 70s but she burst onto the art scene with The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a multimedia presentation of over 900 photographs taken between 1979 and 1986 that captured an unflinching, candid record of herself, her friends and her lovers, including drug addicts, prostitutes and misfits from New York and Europe’s hedonistic underground and gay subculture. By the 90s, many of her subjects had succumbed to AIDS. In I Remember Your Face, Lidl follows Goldin — almost 60 when the footage was lensed — on a nostalgic journey as she travels from Paris to Berlin, visiting old haunts and reconnecting with friends, recounting the details of previous encounters and espousing wry observations on topics as diverse as Evil as a religious belief, the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, the impact of her sister’s suicide and the joy of giving a hummer. The result is a personal, incautious and thoroughly engaging view of the artist at work and at play.

Medea Film – Irene Höfer