Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Anoushka Slater
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Ezmae Chang
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
slanesr
How To Survive A Plague beautifully captures the story of young gay women and men as they fight against AIDS. The movie follows two groups, ACT-UP (Aids Coalition To Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group) as they fight to bring awareness and find a cure for AIDS. Through interviews, home movies and footage of the protests, you meet multiple gay men and women who have contracted AIDS and are fighting for their lives. They organize and attend multiple protests to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic while also trying to find a cure.Without any scientific training or experience, they educate themselves on the dangers of AIDS, how the disease works and their treatment options. Many begin to sell, buy and use drugs not approved by the FDA in an effort to save their lives. While at the same time pushing the FDA and pharmaceutical industry to test and approve new drugs at record time. Throughout the time this film covers, you get a true insight to the discrimination they faced, the fear they felt, and their struggle to stay alive. Many of those featured in the movie end up dying after contracting the disease, very accurately capturing what those in the homosexual community were facing. You can truly see the passion and effort these men and women put into finding treatment for AIDS. However, the footage of the protests begins to become repetitive and boring. I also would have preferred if there was more of an explanation of how the medications work. The explanation you get is very brief and seems out of place in respect to the rest of the movie.Overall, this movie does a wonderful job highlighting the work done by ACT-UP and TAG to advocate and find treatment for AIDS. It's a must see for anyone looking to educate themselves on the AIDS epidemic in America.
vilj-1
This documentary was shown by PBS, in my area, on Monday 12/30/2013. That was GOOD, since otherwise, I would not have watched it, because I didn't even know this 2012 documentary even existed. The BAD part of it, is that PBS showed it from 11pm to 12:30pm, therefore they showed a close to a 1:30 hours documentary and the running time of it is 1:50 hours. That's 20 minutes of footage missing from the original documentary, which was filmed with a running time of 110 minutes. Documentaries are usually well edited, that's why there is always a lot of "extras," deleted scenes and so on. GOOD for PBS for showing it, but BAD (very bad) for cutting 20 minutes from it.
hurtstotalktoyou
After having been very surprised and impressed with the AIDS documentary We Were Here, I thought I'd check out this one too. Unfortunately I found myself very disappointed.The documentary follows the political activism of ACT UP and TAG, and doesn't stray very far from that main track. The filmmakers took a clear political stance on the side of the activists, and much of the documentary smacks of "preaching to the choir." Serious issues are not always taken seriously, and public figures such as George Bush Sr. and Jesse Helms are openly mocked by both the people in the documentary and also the filmmakers themselves.My main disappointment involved the documentary's focus, which fixed unwaveringly upon the activists. To be fair, this might be a good thing if you happen to be interested in ACT UP and TAG. But some websites (e.g. wikipedia) misleadingly suggest that the documentary also discusses more generally the early period of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. In fact, rarely do the filmmakers show us anything beyond the activism itself. It does not delve into any serious scientific issues, nor does it help us understand the early development of attitudes and expectations people had regarding HIV and AIDS. Also note that it only covers the years from 1987 onward. So we don't get to see anything at all about the beginning of the epidemic in 1981-1986.Maybe others would appreciate this film, but I did not enjoy it at all. Even for those who are interested in the subject matter, it's hard to imagine this being a compelling documentary. But for those of us who aren't already interested in this particular thread in the history of AIDS, it falls even flatter. It's not as bad as some documentaries, but I certainly don't recommend it either. Sorry to be so negative, but that's just how I see it.
Le Movie Snob
This movie is an excellent, engrossing, and necessary document to an important period of history.Living in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was familiar with ACT-UP. At least I thought I was.ACT-UP is the acronym for the Aids Coalition To Unleash Power, an organization founded by gay activists to pressure the powers that be to help them fight the deadly disease ravaging their community. Their accomplishments have benefited every citizen of the United States, gay and straight, and they deserve our recognition and gratitude.After watching this movie, I felt old and sad. Old because I remember how frightening AIDS was. I remember learning of the deaths of artists I had just discovered, like the fashion designer Patrick Kelly and disco diva Sylvester. I remember exactly where I was when I heard Freddie Mercury had died. Having dated some "confused" guys, I remember the dread of getting tested. I remember when AIDS meant certain death.For gays to be fighting for the right to marry today almost seems to be a luxury. The footage opening the movie seems quaint today: people in acid-washed, mommy-cut jeans being arrested as they shout "Health care is a right!" Who did these people think they were?Director David France: "We didn't know from week to week who was going to make it. That was a literal fact. There's no hyperbole there. It's one thing to try and tell somebody that, but what this archive of footage allowed me to do was to show it and allow the audience to wonder from frame to frame who would live and who would die."They challenged the FDA and changed the drug approval procedure. They challenged pharmaceutical companies and got them to lower their prices as well as speed up their research process. They created a blueprint for how to make a difference in the world.It's important to remember that they accomplished all of this without the internet, social media, or cell phones. They accomplished this with Republican presidents. They accomplished this despite the societal acceptance prejudice against homosexuals.The people profiled who became the core members of ACT UP had nothing in common save the fear of death. Of particular note:Larry Kramer might be the only one with any name recognition. His 1987 New York Times op-ed piece is credited for the founding of ACT UP. His appearances and interviews in the movie are the most eloquent, as one would expect from a playwright.Peter Staley was a bond trader who tested positive for HIV two years after moving to New York. He was given a flyer for an ACT UP protest but had not planned to attend until his boss said "Everyone with AIDS deserves to die because they take it up the butt." His knowledge of corporate culture informed ACT UP's successful demonstrations against pharmaceutical companies and federal bureaucracies.Iris Long was a straight housewife from Queens who felt compelled to share what she'd learned from her twenty years of working in drug development. She taught ACT UP the protocols of every aspect of drug creation allowing them to take on the establishment with authority. Ultimately, her contributions were more valuable than any other member.Bob Rafsky was a PR director who came out at age 40. The movie includes a gripping scene of him confronting candidate Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign.The movie's director, David France, insists he's not a movie director. That is very humble of him; much of the footage in this film was shot by people who succumbed to the plague (they are given screen credit). France is a journalist whose career has been spent covering the disease. Realizing that the disease was discovered at the same time camcorders hit the market gave him the idea to make this movie. The story of ACT UP emerged from the over 700 hours of footage he found.Along with last year's documentary We Were Here, the time has come for the story of AIDS to be told, lest it be forgotten. Many of those on the front lines have had the trauma affect their memories. As was observed in Holocaust survivors, beyond a specific date, no one could remember what happened.That date was 1996 when the Protease Inhibitor Crixivan was approved. By December of that year, AIDS deaths in New York City had gone down by 50%. Had Presidents Reagan and Bush committed more funding to AIDS, that drug would have appeared sooner and many lives could have been saved. Bush's own AIDS commission criticized his lack of commitment in June, 1992.France said that year " ...AIDS became a non-story. Newspapers stopped writing about it. It was over."Today, HIV is a manageable condition rather than a death sentence.Despite its subject matter, this is not a propogand-doc. France doesn't ignore the infighting that threatened ACT-UP's existence; in fact Larry Kramer is critical of the movie for not including more of these details. I'm sad he's not happy with the movie. The movie includes footage of him angrily berating those infighters. "Plague!!!" he exclaims in exasperation. " It is a plague that is not going to go away. It is only going to get worse," he said in 2011.His choice to interview the pharmaceutical scientists is an inspired one. It is a reminder that drug companies are not the enemy. ACT UP proved that the real route to change is to work within the existing systems, not to destroy them.
