Peter Hujar’s Day

Peter Hujar talks about life in a city where everyone wants to make art but no one has any money; about an encounter with Allen Ginsberg; about the literary merits of Susan Sontag compared to Fran Lebowitz; or simply about his dinner and cheap cigarettes. The two friends talk late into the night, as only true friends can: with honesty, intimacy, humour, and affection.

Peter Hujar’s Day offers a glimpse into a single day in the life of the celebrated and distinctive photographer Peter Hujar (1934–1987). Hujar’s work is widely regarded as one of the most significant visual records of New York’s artistic and queer communities in the 1970s and ’80s. Although Rosenkrantz’s original art project was never completed, a transcript of her conversation with Hujar was rediscovered in 2019. Director Ira Sachs (Passages, Love Is Strange) transforms this remarkable exchange into both a tribute to the photographer, who died far too young, and a celebration of friendship, creativity, and a New York that now survives only in traces. Featuring outstanding performances by Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, this captivating portrait of an artist and his era received widespread international acclaim and screened at numerous film festivals.