Heroin is Wojnarowicz’s earliest film, made in response to the increasing heroin use he observed among his coterie. Structured as a cautionary tale, it begins with candid shots of people preparing and injecting syringes in their apartments and culminates in a brief montage of, in his words, “different people dead in their kitchens, on their rooftops, in their hallways, in the street.”

Like his revered photographic series, Rimbaud in New York (1978-9), the film foregrounds his deep identification with society’s most marginalized and provides an intimate look into the spaces inhabited by downtown NYC subcultures. Heroin was filmed in part at the derelict Hudson River Piers, at the time a site for homosexual cruising and underground art, and features Wojnarowicz’s 3TeensKill4 band mates, Brian Butterick and Jesse Hultberg.