The story of musician Thomas Muchimba Buttenschøn - born HIV+ in 1985 - and his crusade to use his music to wipe out AIDS in his native Zambia and beyond.
Chris Aka
as Self
Cana Buttenschøn
Jens Buttenschøn
Jewish family man Marvin leaves his wife and son for a male lover during the height of the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City.
In a record of images and sounds, a HIV-positive man recounts his sexual experience on the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
Different experts make a stand against today's putatively criminal and harmful health system, focusing on Anthony Fauci and his role in the shaping of the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics.
Gabriel Drolet-Maguire, a designer living in Montreal, takes us into their artistic world to discuss their HIV diagnosis. This is a timely and hopeful look at past and present day HIV/AIDS activism in Quebec.
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.
Through interviews with key AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) stakeholders from over the years coupled with archival video footage culled from AHF's 30 years of advocacy, care and activism, 'Keeping the Promise' tells a compelling story of AHF's history while offering a glimpse of, and road map to its future.
A documentary film that tells the story of the Peter Kruger Clinic (PKC) – one of the first HIV/AIDS clinics in the United States, which was established at Beth Israel Hospital in 1989. Started during the height of the epidemic in New York City, PKC boldly stood against the stigma of the disease and served as a beacon of hope and a model of care for those New Yorkers diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. This powerful film traces the clinic’s origins and its impact over the last 3 decades, as told by the patients and staff that have called it home.
A short remake of Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice where instead of a cholera epidemic it's the "Acquired Dread of Sex" (ADS) epidemic.
Outraged by the controversial January, 1988 article in Cosmopolitan magazine, the women in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, (Act Up, New York), organized the first AIDS demonstration focused on women. Doctors, Liars and Women:AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo not only documents the efforts of the Women's Committee to organize this protest, it also serves as a how-to-guide for direct action.
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.
With his soaring falsetto and magnetic yet understated stage presence, Jimmy Somerville burst onto the 1980s new wave scene, making the world dance to songs rooted in struggle and resilience. From the harsh realities of Glasgow’s working-class neighborhoods to the challenges of growing up gay in a hostile world, and the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis, Somerville transformed pain into anthems of freedom. First with Bronski Beat, then The Communards, and later as a solo artist, he became both rebel and diva—the unmistakable voice of a generation fighting for equality. Through intimate stories from those who have stood by him for four decades, this portrait reveals a rare artist who has never wavered in his convictions.
An in-depth portrait of British composer, pianist and singer Elton John, pop star and myth of modern culture.
After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks: What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS?
Letter Beyond the Walls reconstructs the trajectory of HIV and AIDS with a focus on Brazil, through interviews with doctors, activists, patients and other actors, in addition to extensive archival material. From the initial panic to awareness campaigns, passing through the stigma imposed on people living with HIV, the documentary shows how society faced this epidemic in its deadliest phase over more than two decades. With this historical approach as its base, the film looks at the way HIV is viewed in today's society, revealing a picture of persistent misinformation and prejudice, which especially affects Brazil’s most historically vulnerable populations.
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
Inspired by the moving book “Só as Mães São Felizes”, by Lucinha Araújo, Cazuza's mother, the film covers a little more than 10 years of the singer’s crazy and brief life – from the beginning of his career in the Circo Voador venue, in 1981, to the huge success and the apotheosis of his shows with the Barão Vermelho band, his solo career, his relations with his parents, friends, lovers and passions, and the courage he had to face his final years, with HIV, until his death, in 1990.
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.