Black Tar Heroin (film)

Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street is a 1999 documentary directed by Steven Okazaki. Filmed from 1995 to 1998 in the Tenderloin, San Francisco, California, the documentary offers the viewer a sobering dose of reality about the lives of black tar heroin addicts.

Additional recommended knowledge

Essential Laboratory Skills Guide

Daily Sensitivity Test

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Overview

The film follows a simple structure, and shows the drug-related degradation of five youths (Jake, Tracey, Jessica, Alice, and Oreo) during the course of three years. The film is brutal in the depiction of drug-related crimes and diseases: prostitution, male prostitution, AIDS, and lethal overdoses. The director also put a lot of emphasis on the moral sides pertaining to the junkie lifestyle: from the question of robbing other people for money to the degradation of family relations and loss of friends, a wide scale of highly unconventional problems are exposed.

Release

• The film was produced by HBO and was frequently shown in 1999 on the channel, as part of their "America Undercover" series, becoming one of its top-rated documentaries.
• The documentary received a theatrical release on the 17th of March, 2000 at San Francisco's Roxie Theatre, and is still available on DVD.
• The film became available through Google Video in June, 2007.