[FILM] The ACT UP Diaries by Mateo Wilhelm Ebert Reviewed by Rob Zukowski Created by Mateo Wilhelm Ebert, a member of ACT UP NY, the ACT UP Diaries is a video compilation made from 1985–1992. It was a critical time in history; one whose impact would shape future generations and help ensure their survival. On the project’s Web page, Ebert states, “I use this channel as a mode of healing from very difficult memories. It is dedicated to the many lives lost to AIDS, and [...]

[FILM] Ending Silence, Shame & Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family Directed by Kat Cheairs Dark Hollow Films Reviewed by V. Anderson Ending Silence, Shame & Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family looks back to the years before 1982, when AIDS was called GRID (“Gay-related infectious [more commonly, “immunodeficiency] disease” as identified by an interviewee) because it was then believed to be a “gay white male issue,” and forward to the potential for open, non-judgmental dialogue within African-American communities that have been historically [...]

V. Anderson talks with Sade Oyinade about making educational films that kids won’t laugh at I don’t remember much about the educational films I was shown as a kid, but I do remember mocking them intensely, both for their overbearing messages and for their out of date language and style. American English changes a lot from decade to decade, and if it’s a little bit off, well, a decade is a long time for a fourteen-year-old. Just as we used to call the Internet the [...]

A Los Angeles health clinic launches a telenovela about a Fictional Latino family at risk to encourage HIV testing by Larry Buhl Los Angeles-based AltaMed Health Services’ Universal HIV Testing Initiative had a dilemma. It needed to promote routine HIV screening among all adults, adolescents, and pregnant women and encourage more Latino clients to get tested. Their new outreach effort had several mandates: educate the clinics’ mostly Latino population about how HIV is spread; encourage universal HIV testing for everyone fifteen and older; erase the [...]

David France, Director of HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, talks with V. Anderson About Our History of Fighting Back I’ve tried writing [fiction] scripts before. But I get over-attached to the truth, and maybe that’s the thing that keeps us journalists.” With a background in long-form journalism, director David France speaks of shaping the groundbreaking events in the footage, shot by the activists who witnessed them, into How To Survive a Plague. This documentary throws the viewer right into the center of the action, causing [...]

In a New Documentary, Four Youth Affected by HIV Open Their Hearts and Bare Their Souls by Chip Alfred Photos Courtesy Border2Border Entertainment Our youth should be a time for self-discovery and dreaming about the future. Now imagine what it’s like to be a young person with your whole life in front of you, then your world is turned upside down by a positive HIV test result? How do you rediscover yourself? What becomes of those dreams? That’s what a new film, Positive Youth, explores, [...]

An Award-Winning Film Documents Struggles & Victories of Children Living with HIV by Chip Alfred An estimated fifteen million children have been orphaned by AIDS. About one in five is living with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. Tiny Tears is an impassioned and compelling chronicle of the daily lives of these AIDS orphans and children affected by HIV on four continents. In 2006, executive producer and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Brian Mehling and producer/director Robert Corna set out to make a humanitarian movie about [...]

A New Film on ACT UP Traces Twenty-Five Years of Channeling Outrage into Action by Larry Buhl In April 1987, 300 members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) staged its first demonstration: marching on Wall Street to protest the high cost and lack of availability of HIV treatment medications. In April 2012, ACT UP old-timers joined newer members and supporters of Occupy Wall Street in another march on Wall Street to celebrate twenty-five years of AIDS activism and make a new demand: a small [...]

A New Documentary, deepsouth, from Filmmaker Lisa Biagiotti Amplifies the Voices of AIDS in the South by V. Anderson Oddly, journalist and filmmaker Lisa Biagiotti’s Caribbean background—Jamaican of Chinese descent—led her to a documentary on HIV/AIDS in America’s rural South. She was writing about HIV and homophobia in Jamaica and noticed “a lot of similarities between the South and Jamaica in terms of their religious and cultural traditions and the legacy of slavery….When I’m in the South, it does feel very Jamaican.” Biagiotti explains her [...]

Angela Leroux-Lindsey Talks to Director Renata Simone About Her Film, Endgame: AIDS in Black America This month, the United States will host the International AIDS Conference for the first time since 1990—a fitting acknowledgement to the fact that President Obama, as one of his first acts in office, lifted the ban that prevented travelers with HIV from entering the country. Three decades into an epidemic that has arguably affected everyone on this planet, HIV/AIDS still faces stigma, and despite efforts by Obama and other prominent [...]