Sundance Film Festival
Official Selection
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Last Address2009
Ira Sachs pays tribute to a lost generation of New York artists and writers with a montage comprised entirely of shots of building exteriors (the last addresses of twenty New York artists and writers who died of AIDS). In spite of the elegiac theme, the shots themselves are full of movement, sound and light, signs of life and all that was left behind. Please excuse the poor source quality of this film. It is presented here in the best transfer currently available. - Max Goldberg
What makes this film worth watching?
1 member likes this review
After I moved into an apartment in Santa Fe, I found out that the writer Robert Stone had rented it for awhile a few years ago. Like that experience, Last Address asks us to meditate on the stories of the people creating art in buildings. Ira Sachs films the buildings of 50 New York artists who died of AIDS between 1983 and 2007. Connecting these histories and this suffering and all that creation with specific spaces lends concrete power to their lives. That these people died of AIDS seems less important than the wonderment of walking around a big city like New York and wondering who lived there. That's not even just true of the artists and politicians and plutocrats. It's the same wandering around the Lower East Side, or at least the parts that survived urban renewal. Did this building have a resident who died in the Triangle Fire? Did that one house a jazz musician? Was the one over there the final home of an artist who died of AIDS? Each old building, each street, each place has so many overlapping stories. These are mostly lost to time but when sometimes takes the time to collect them, as Sachs does here, they can be very powerful.
top reviewer
Poster & Images
Member Reviews (3)
top reviewer
After I moved into an apartment in Santa Fe, I found out that the writer Robert Stone had rented it for awhile a few years ago. Like that experience, Last Address asks us to meditate on the stories of the people creating art in buildings. Ira Sachs films the buildings of 50 New York artists who died of AIDS between 1983 and 2007. Connecting these histories and this suffering and all that creation with specific spaces lends concrete power to their lives. That these people died of AIDS seems less important than the wonderment of walking around a big city like New York and wondering who lived there. That's not even just true of the artists and politicians and plutocrats. It's the same wandering around the Lower East Side, or at least the parts that survived urban renewal. Did this building have a resident who died in the Triangle Fire? Did that one house a jazz musician? Was the one over there the final home of an artist who died of AIDS? Each old building, each street, each place has so many overlapping stories. These are mostly lost to time but when sometimes takes the time to collect them, as Sachs does here, they can be very powerful.
1 member likes this review
Outstanding! 4 out of 5 stars. A bit of shaky camera work towards the end. This film is just my speed. The message is plain and clear. 50 lives in 10 New York minutes. Bravo !
Sincerely,
-Dana Young
1 member likes this review
top reviewer
This is a great movie if you knew some of the New York CIty gay artists of the 80s and 90s who died of AIDS. It's a memento of that time and of the way that time goes on, even though for those of us that went through that time, it wil always be with us.