HIV/AIDS Histories: Community Service Organizations and the Direct-Action AIDS Movement in Documentary Film

Abstract

HIV/AIDS Histories: Community Service Organizations and the Direct-Action AIDS Movement in Documentary Film Richard A. McKay We Were Here( Peccadillo Pictures, 2011). Directed and produced by David Weissman. 89 minutes. United in Anger: A History of ACT UP( United in Anger, Inc., 2012). Directed by Jim Hubbard. Produced by Sarah Schulman. 93 minutes. How to Survive a Plague( Network Releasing, 2012). Directed by David France. Produced by Howard Gertler and David France. 105 minutes. With releases timed to accompany the thirtieth anniversary of the recognition in 1981 of a syndrome that would become known as AIDS, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the formation of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)—the best-known direct-action AIDS protest group—three new documentary films offer compelling and contrasting accounts of the worst years of the American HIV/ AIDS epidemic. Covering the fifteen-year period before the development of effective combination antiretroviral therapy in 1996, the films chart the initiatives that emerged from the nation’s lesbian and gay communities in response to the deaths of tens of thousands amidst widespread social apathy and governmental neglect. We Were Herefocuses on the changes wrought by the arrival of HIV in San Francisco, in particular the creation of a remarkably successful and diverse patchwork of community-based AIDS service organizations in the 1980s. By contrast, United in Angerand How to Survive a Plaguefocus predominantly on New York, and on the political activism, media savvy, and emotional dynamics of ACT UP from 1987 onward as this group fought for more effective and more widely available HIV treatment, prevention, and support for people living with AIDS. David Weissman’s We Were Herefeatures five San Francisco residents—Paul, a political activist and community organizer; Guy, a flower seller on Castro Street; Eileen, a nurse with a background in the women’s movement; Ed, an educator and caregiver; and Daniel, an artist and entrepreneur. It follows them from their arrival in the Bay Area during the 1970s and through their life-changing encounters with the disease that silently established itself in the city at about the same time. With their on-camera testimonies providing a narrative frame for a rich montage of archival photographs, documents, and film footage, the documentary unfolds more or less chronologically. It explores the community’s gradual realization of the scale of the medical disaster, the support and rejection of patients by family and friends, the constant obituaries in local newspapers, hospital treatment and experimental drug trials, and the network of volunteer organizations that sprang up to care for those who were sick and dying. Weissman and his editor and co-director, Bill Weber, set up a slow, elegiac pace for the film, regularly fading to black and employing skilful dissolves to forge powerful associations between still images, a technique that is most evident when depicting the ravages of HIV and [End Page 734]its opportunistic infections on young gay men. While such visual representations of the syndrome were at one time strongly protested by AIDS activists, it struck me that—in an era when late-stage HIV disease is much less visible in North America—a visual reminder of the infection’s devastating power might be timely for a new generation of viewers. The film’s narrators are engaging, with two moments in particular resonating with my own experience of interviewing survivors of the epidemic. One was the heart-wrenching immediacy and raw emotions captured when Daniel recalls the “avalanche” of deaths he endured in rapid succession; in addition to many friends dying, the epidemic claimed the lives of two successive lovers while he was struggling with his own HIV infection. Another striking moment was Ed’s powerful description of how the epidemic created openings in the gay community for caregiving to come to the fore. These changes allowed people like him to find and carve out places for themselves that had hitherto not been possible; thus, opportunities may be present in even the bleakest of moments. While the film’s coverage includes candlelight marches, the rise of a more confrontational AIDS activism, and the eventual development of effective antiretroviral therapy, the film’s main...