# High Art
**High Art** is a 1998 American independent drama directed by Lisa Cholodenko, her debut feature, about an ambitious young magazine editor who becomes entangled professionally and romantically with a once-famous photographer living in seclusion with heroin addiction in the New York art world. It stars [Ally Sheedy](https://www.edgepedia.org/ally-sheedy) as Lucy Berliner, Radha Mitchell as Syd, and [Patricia Clarkson](https://www.edgepedia.org/patricia-clarkson) as Greta, Lucy's lover.[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) The film premiered at the 1998 [Sundance Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/sundance-film-festival), where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and is regarded as a landmark of both queer and 1990s independent cinema.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / writer | Lisa Cholodenko, her first feature film[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) |
| Release | 1998; theatrical release June 12, 1998, distributed by October Films[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art) |
| Runtime / format | 102 minutes, color, 1.85:1, English[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) |
| Principal cast | Ally Sheedy (Lucy Berliner), Radha Mitchell (Syd), Patricia Clarkson (Greta), Gabriel Mann (James)[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) |
| Festival honors | Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance 1998; screened in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish) |
| Box office | $1.9 million gross in the United States[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art) |
| Critical standing | 79% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 53 reviews[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art) |
| Restoration | New 4K restoration by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive with the Sundance Institute; Criterion Collection spine #1314[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and themes
Syd ([Radha Mitchell](https://www.edgepedia.org/radha-mitchell)) is a young assistant editor at Frame, a prestigious New York photography magazine, who lives with her boyfriend James ([Gabriel Mann](https://www.edgepedia.org/gabriel-mann)). When a leak from the apartment above leads her upstairs, she meets Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), a once-celebrated fine art photographer who has retreated from the art world into a life of heroin abuse with her lover Greta (Patricia Clarkson), a faded German actress, and a shifting circle of users.[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/06/19/high-art-muse-you-can-use/796600b6-051a-44cf-aa18-4de42305705a/)
Syd's admiration revives Lucy's career, and a commission from Frame draws the two women into an affair in which professional ambition and personal attraction become dangerously entwined. [Collateral damage](https://www.edgepedia.org/collateral-damage) falls on James and on Greta, whose relationship with Lucy is displaced as Syd becomes both Lucy's editor and lover.[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/06/19/high-art-muse-you-can-use/796600b6-051a-44cf-aa18-4de42305705a/) The film addresses the ethics of cannibalizing one's personal life for art, but its central concern, in Michael O'Sullivan's Washington Post review, is the danger and emotional cost of handing another person your heart.[4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/06/19/high-art-muse-you-can-use/796600b6-051a-44cf-aa18-4de42305705a/)
The critic B. Ruby Rich, author of *New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut* (2013), wrote that the film's final scenes constitute its ultimate transgression: revealing that being a lesbian is no guarantee of a happy ending. At the time of release it was deeply transgressive for lesbian audiences, disrupting no-go subjects such as infidelity, bisexuality, careerism, and death that had long been excluded from a community cinema built on positive images and coming-out romances.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish)
## Production and origins
**From Columbia to Sundance.** Cholodenko grew up in Los Angeles, worked briefly on the fringes of the film industry, and moved to New York in the early 1990s for graduate school at Columbia, where [Miloš Forman](https://www.edgepedia.org/milos-forman) was her screenwriting mentor and producer James Schamus was supportive. She became fascinated by the "heroin chic" lesbian milieu of the East Village, though she has said she never tried heroin herself.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish)
The film was produced independently, outside studio financing, by Dolly Hall, Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte (credited as Jeffrey Levy-Hinte on some records), and Susan A. Stover. Hall had already produced *The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love* (1995) and *All Over Me* (1997), making her a central producer of 1990s lesbian independent cinema. With professional financing in place, Cholodenko could cast professional actors rather than the friends and non-actors typical of earlier low-budget lesbian features.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish) • [5](https://sightlines.media/film/37636/high-art-1998)
Cholodenko's collaborators included cinematographer Tami Reiker, who had shot *The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love*, and editor Amy E. Duddleston, who had cut her teeth on early [Gus Van Sant](https://www.edgepedia.org/gus-van-sant) films. The score is by the band Shudder to Think, whose melancholy mood music gives the film what the Washington Post called a fatalistic, funerary pulse.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish) • [4](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/06/19/high-art-muse-you-can-use/796600b6-051a-44cf-aa18-4de42305705a/) Lucy's character was based loosely on the photographer [Nan Goldin](https://www.edgepedia.org/nan-goldin), known for intimate portraits of the New York demimonde.[6](https://www.criterionchannel.com/films/VusP2ZcV/high-art)
## Release and reception
After winning the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, the film appeared in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and opened the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco in June 1998, where a Castro Theatre screening drew more than a thousand cheering lesbian viewers.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish) October Films, then a boutique distributor recently majority-acquired by Universal, released it theatrically on June 12, 1998; it grossed $1.9 million in the United States.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art) • [5](https://sightlines.media/film/37636/high-art-1998)
Critics responded strongly to Sheedy's performance. Roger Ebert, the [Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.edgepedia.org/chicago-sun-times) critic and 1975 [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/pulitzer-prize) winner, called the film "so perceptive and mature it makes similar films seem flippant."[7](https://mk2films.com/en/film/high-art/) The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus credits "a surprisingly sultry performance from Ally Sheedy" with elevating the film.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art) Sheedy's role brought her the most critical acclaim of her career, including Best Actress awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics, and the [Independent Spirit Awards](https://www.edgepedia.org/independent-spirit-awards).[8](https://www.queerty.com/seedy-1998-indie-high-art-is-a-queer-classic-of-sapphic-awakening-20260131/) The film also received a Jury Special Prize for Cholodenko at the Deauville Film Festival and a Golden Camera nomination at Cannes.[9](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139362/awards/)
## Place in queer and independent cinema
The film arrived at a turning point for the New Queer Cinema, the movement named by B. Ruby Rich in 1992. Earlier lesbian entries such as Rose Troche's *Go Fish* (1994) and Cheryl Dunye's *The Watermelon Woman* (1996) were low-budget films that created their own stars out of necessity; *High Art*, with its polished script, professional cast, and festival backing, was the first lesbian film of the movement to cross over in a big way to mainstream audiences.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish)
Scholar Maria San Filippo writes that lesbian independent filmmaking after New Queer Cinema had ventured little beyond the romantic comedies popularized by *Go Fish*, and that *High Art* departed radically from that film's do-it-yourself aesthetic, positive images, and identity politics with its portrait of an ill-fated affair between an ambitious aspiring art critic and a heroin-addicted has-been photographer.[10](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/indie-reframed/sexual-inbetweenerindustry-inbetweener-the-career-and-films-of-lisa-cholodenko/1303C3324CB39462100C7B401C429E9F) Within lesbian screen history it is routinely positioned as the pivot from the coming-out narrative to adult tragedy.[5](https://sightlines.media/film/37636/high-art-1998)
For Cholodenko, the film did not immediately lead to mainstream Hollywood work; she built a steady career largely in television before her biggest success with *The Kids Are All Right* (2010), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.[8](https://www.queerty.com/seedy-1998-indie-high-art-is-a-queer-classic-of-sapphic-awakening-20260131/)
## Restoration and legacy
The film was restored in a new 4K digital restoration by the Academy Film Archive and the UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with the Sundance Institute, with funding from the [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences](https://www.edgepedia.org/academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences), Frameline, the Sundance Institute, and UCLA. Frameline co-funded the restoration and screened it in 2024, twenty-six years after *High Art* opened Frameline22.[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art) • [11](https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline48/high-art) [The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) issued the restoration on Blu-ray as spine #1314, supervised and approved by Cholodenko, with a 2004 audio commentary, a conversation between Cholodenko and filmmaker [Karyn Kusama](https://www.edgepedia.org/karyn-kusama), new interviews with Sheedy, Mitchell, and stills photographer JoJo Whilden, and Cholodenko's short film *Dinner Party* (1997).[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art)
Frameline's retrospective materials describe the film as made with a predominantly all-female crew and as signaling the last hurrah of a particular era of queer women's cinema in the heyday of 1990s American independent film; it ranked #18 on Autostraddle's 2024 list of the best lesbian movies of all time.[11](https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline48/high-art)
## References
1. [High Art, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/32507-high-art)
2. [B. Ruby Rich, "High Art: Photo Finish," The Criterion Collection, June 16, 2026](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9191-high-art-photo-finish)
3. [High Art, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_art)
4. [Michael O'Sullivan, "'High Art': Muse You Can Use," The Washington Post, June 18, 1998](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/06/19/high-art-muse-you-can-use/796600b6-051a-44cf-aa18-4de42305705a/)
5. [High Art (1998), Sightlines](https://sightlines.media/film/37636/high-art-1998)
6. [High Art, The Criterion Channel](https://www.criterionchannel.com/films/VusP2ZcV/high-art)
7. [HIGH ART, mk2 Films](https://mk2films.com/en/film/high-art/)
8. [Jorge Molina, "Sexy & seedy, 1998 indie High Art is a queer classic of sapphic awakening," Queerty, January 31, 2026](https://www.queerty.com/seedy-1998-indie-high-art-is-a-queer-classic-of-sapphic-awakening-20260131/)
9. [High Art (1998) Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139362/awards/)
10. [Maria San Filippo, "Sexual In-betweener/Industry In-betweener: The Career and Films of Lisa Cholodenko," in *Indie Reframed*, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/indie-reframed/sexual-inbetweenerindustry-inbetweener-the-career-and-films-of-lisa-cholodenko/1303C3324CB39462100C7B401C429E9F)
11. [High Art, Frameline48 festival archive](https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline48/high-art)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license