PETER HUJAR'S DAY by Asia Lo Savio

Film director Ira Sachs transforms the recovered transcript of a conversation between American writer Linda Rosenkrantz and photographer Peter Hujar into the film, PETER HUJAR’S DAY. It’s not a biographical portrait, but a poetic reminiscence of Hujar, a home movie like Chantal Akerman NEWS FROM HOME might have been in 1976. 

Linda and Hujar’s initial conversation took place in her apartment in 1974, when she had started a project recording her friends and artists recounting their day. The tape on which her meeting with Hujar was recorded was lost, but a transcript of it was later found at the Morgan Library in New York. That transcript allowed Rosenkrantz to publish the book Peter Hujar’s Day in 2021 and as the book found its way to Sachs, it inspired him to make the film.

Sachs collaborates with Ben Whishaw for the second time since PASSAGES (2023), which was a success. The actor plays Peter Hujar and the cast features another UK talent, Rebecca Hall as Linda Rosenkrantz. Sachs kept the format of Linda’s original work. The basis and main subject of the film is Hujar chronologically going through what he did from morning until evening. The director played with space, light, and performance to shape it, but it all takes place in Linda’s apartment. Sachs recreated it with the collaboration of Westbeth Artists Housing, the New York organisation supporting artists since the 1970s - they receive a generous thank you in the film’s credits.

Whishaw and Hall’s performance has the style and tone of a play. The camera stays with the actors producing a sense of stillness and hypnotism for the entire duration of the film. After such close observation, the viewer would be able to draw the characters from memory. Whishaw is predominantly in the frame but the actors’ micro-movements and gestures control the picture. Whishaw’s hands are in constant action. As he recounts a day in Hujar’s life, his hands complement the narrative by brushing the sofa, holding one cigarette after the other, caressing Linda, laying them on his trousers, passing them through his hair, serving a drink, or playing a vinyl. Hall, on the other hand, uses her gaze to create a captivating and friendly connection with both Whishaw and the viewer. She gives to the act of listing, which is what she does for the most part, an active almost seducing presence. 

Peter Hujar did not receive much recognition during his lifetime and unfortunately died of AIDS in 1987. In the past decade, however, there has been an active cultural and artistic group effort to reinsert the artist in the history of photography and queer discourse along the lines of icons such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Avedon. Sach’s film and, just this year in London, Raven Row gallery’s major show Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark and Pace Gallery representation of his work at the Frieze Art Fair are an instance that Hujar is no longer forgotten.