Recent Removal of Sackler Name From London’s Victoria and Albert Museum
The Oscar-winner said she had thought she’d have to organize a protest outside the museum ahead of her London Film Festival premiere of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed: “But now we don’t have to.”
The family whose company, Purdue Pharma, is accused of being responsible for the U.S. opioid crisis —
The film concludes with the news that, following several years of diligent and creative campaigning by Goldin and her organization PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), the Sackler name was erased from museums and galleries on both sides of the Atlantic and Channel, including the Louvre, Guggenheim, Met, Serpentine, Tate and British Museum.
“The name is down as of about a week ago,” Poitras told an audience at BAFTA’s London headquarters following a screening on Oct. 10. “I was thinking that we’d have to do a protest or something before the screening, but now we don’t have to.”
Poitras explained that All The Beauty and the Bloodshed was one of her first films which relied heavily on archival footage, with her having joined the project in 2019, a year after Goldin had begun her actions against the Sackler family and its association with the arts. As such, she didn’t film either the protests at the Guggenheim and Met, which feature. But she was on hand to shoot the protest that took place outside the V&A Museum in 2019.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed made history in Venice by becoming only the second documentary in the festival’s history to win the top prize. Poitras said that it was “such a thrill” simply being invited to be in the competition.
“I believe that documentaries are cinema,” she said. “I truly believe that and that they should be seen alongside scripted projects. So I was so honored to be invited to show in competition. I do think that we shouldn’t create these distinctions.”
Although Poitras may not have needed to start a protest outside the V&A museum about the Sackler family, the Oscar-winner still found time to take part in another on Monday. Alongside a number of other filmmakers, she joined a London Film Festival-organized “moment of solidarity and reflection” against the imprisonment of Iranian directors — including Jafar Panahi, whose No Bears premiered at the festival — and other incarcerated artists, and to show support for the protestors in Iran.
