The documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed  about artist Nan Goldin has a lot to recommend it. It's an activist story about the painstaking process of forcing justice on a situation when all the prevailing momentum is going in the opposite direction. It's also a portrait of the last half of the 20th Century in all its complicated glory. Nan Goldin's older sister was failed by the adults around her. As was Goldin herself. One survived and thrived. Long enough to tell the story and hold people to account. The other succumbed. So it goes, as Vonnegut might say. It's powerful and sometimes very inspiring. One story it tells is about the mythical downtown art scene of New York City, now so long dead and buried it might as well be 1930s Berlin. We can't overestimate the value that such a scene had for all the beautiful misfits out there with nowhere to go. As the reactionary voices in this country do their evil best to crush oddness and dissent and all the behaviours that fall outside their narrow spectrum, it also becomes a melancholic tribute  in Kodachrome and graffiti.

I saw New York City in the '80s and '90s mostly from a safe distance but it's hard to describe how exhilarating it all was. First, off it was absolutely filthy. Whole neighborhoods were covered in a thick layer of grime and decay that looked like it had been there for generations. Most people you saw were either scared or dangerous. The interesting ones straddled the line between the two. Entire sections of the city were pretty much no-go zones for anyone with something to lose. That left prime but decrepit real estate for the ones able to tolerate the rats and shitty falling-down buildings to do whatever the hell they wanted. A lot of the art and music was amateurish but with the right crowd witnessing it there was no better place to be. Seeing the contrast between that old grimy footage and the modern day scenes taking place at the pristine Met or Guggenheim is jarring. All the money sunk into the arts is a big part of this story and what is done to people to get rich. And the conscience willing to make sure no one in the end can hide from truths.