Stiff Sheets indicts public health officials and politicians for the lack of adequate and humane care for people with AIDS in Los Angeles, this time documenting a mock fashion show staged by ACT UP activists.
This follow-up to the 1989 documentary ONE YEAR IN A LIFE OF CRIME revisits three of the original subjects in New Jersey during a five-year period in the 1990s. We share in their triumphs and setbacks as they navigate lives of poverty, drug abuse, AIDS, and petty crime.
The film presents the experiences of women who contracted the AIDS virus from their husbands or steady partners, and highlights the main factors responsible for the feminisation of the disease in Brazil.
This is the inside story of the Freddie Mercury you never knew: a behind the scenes story focusing on the two years that changed his life, from the summer of 1985 at Live AID when he achieved his greatest musical triumph to the spring of 1987 when he faced his deepest fears and was diagnosed with AIDS. It’s the true story of his battle to keep his privacy against a prying tabloid press, to work despite crippling pain and to confound science and save his life.
An enchanted cemetery in Berlin. Next to the Grimm Brothers' grave, stillborn babies and gay people rest in peace. This is the Garden of Stars.
Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
From the onset of the AIDS epidemic, author Larry Kramer emerged as a fiery activist, an Old Testament-style prophet full of righteous fury who denounced both the willful inaction of the government and the refusal of the gay community to curb potentially risky behaviors. Co-founder of both organization Gay Men's Health Crisis and the direct action protest group ACT UP, Kramer was vilified by some who saw his criticism to be an expression of self-hatred, while lionized by others who credit him with waking up the gay community — and, eventually, the government and medical establishment — to the devastation of the disease.
German iconoclast filmmaker and gay-rights activist Rosa vonPraunheim examines his own life and career in the documentary Phooey Rosa! With a quickly paced editing style, the film is a mix of personal banter, candid interviews, and clips from his filmography. It also includes footage from his early film Bed Sausage to his later work Neurosia. At the age of 60, vonPraunheim reveals intimate details about his past relationships and his childhood growing up after WWII. He also implicates some of his friends and inspirations, including Luzi Kryn and Rainer Kranach.
A recording of a play about the intangible impacts AIDS has on a community. This is a moving, beautifully photographed combination of theater and documentary that captures the incredible excitement of live theater and intensifies the power of the play's message.
Controversial documentary about gay men purposely contracting the AIDS virus.
The business of HIV is uncovered through the lens of a long-term survivor, who puts his life on the line in search of a cure.
Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".
Ricardo was once Sara, a homeless HIV positive transvestite, living in the underbelly of Manhattan. Today he is a churchgoing, married man, "saved" by a Dallas ministry. He has renounced his homosexuality, but is his conversion complete? Susana Aiken and Carlos Aparicio offer an intimate look at Ricardo's transformation.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.
In 1987, five young men, using brutally honest rhymes and hardcore beats, put their frustration and anger about life in the most dangerous place in America into the most powerful weapon they had: their music. Taking us back to where it all began, Straight Outta Compton tells the true story of how these cultural rebels—armed only with their lyrics, swagger, bravado and raw talent—stood up to the authorities that meant to keep them down and formed the world’s most dangerous group, N.W.A. And as they spoke the truth that no one had before and exposed life in the hood, their voice ignited a social revolution that is still reverberating today.
On Zambia's Liuwa Plain two star-crossed spotted hyena cubs are born to warring rival clans: Twaambo, a male cub and Nasanta, a female, are destined to lead converging lives as their extreme environment forces them together
Once upon a time in the Gay Village is a montage of photos and music telling the story of the founding of Le Parc de l’Espoir, the AIDS memorial park in the heart of Montreal’s Gay Village.
Stonewall veterans (including prominent trans activist Sylvia Rivera) and HIV-positive New Yorkers take up residency on the Hudson River piers as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.
One morning, Leonardo Galicia wakes up with a dull pain and an intense fever. After a pandemic experience that made him aware of his mortality, the last thing Leonardo expected was an HIV-reactive result. The illness caused by the virus takes hold of Leonardo's body and forces him to take an indefinite break while recovering in a hospital. There, he meets a mysterious young man, Augusto. By sharing common thoughts, hopes, and dreams, the two will find refuge in each other's arms.