Graphic novel

„7 Miles A Second” by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook

David Wojnarowicz is a painter, photographer, performance artist, filmmaker, writer and AIDS activist. He was born in 1954, and spent part of his teenage years selling drugs on the streets, but after graduating from the High School of Music and Art in New York in the mid 1970s, became one of the most prominent representatives of the Manhattan art avant-garde. „7 Miles A Second” is an auto-biographical story of the legendary artist, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992. The graphic novel portrays Wojnarowicz’s youth of prostitution and drugs on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood of living with AIDS and the anger at the indifference of the USA government and health institutions. The book became a cult classic among comic lovers. Romberger’s drawings and Van Cook’s colours capture Wojnarowicz’s story, combining the rough naturalism of life on the streets of Manhattan with the hallucinogenic, psychedelic imagination, perfect for graphic novel format depiction.

Film

„Candy“, directed by Neil Armfield

Australian director Neil Armfield, with the support of Luke Davies, author of “Candy: A Novel of love and addiction”, adapted the suggestive story of two heroin addicts, successfully avoiding pathetic depiction and exaggerated dramatic moments. The focus is on two young people in love, Dan and Candy, brought together by their mutual interest in art. However, life compelled by the desire for experimentation soon leads the young couple to opiates, and drugs become the only purpose in their life. Despite the professor’s advice, a homosexual and inclined to drugs himself, the young poet Dan and the talented artist Candy are convinced they have a strong grip over the situation. However, Candy, who bears the same name as the drug, traverses from a painter to a stripper, a prostitute and finally mentally ill. The rapid story provides the director with a balance between the romantic and the subversive, and talks openly about the reality of having no money and of family conflicts on the couple’s road to becoming independent in contrast to young love. Heroin reigns over every aspect of their life until they decide otherwise…