AIDS activist/archivist James Wentzy to lose his longtime home

Building Blocks: After Chronicling History, SoHo Artist Is Losing a Vantage Point
by David W. Dunlap, The New York Times, May 27, 2013

Filmmaker France tells the history of ACT UP [UPDATE]

How To Survive A Plague
USA 2012; 110 min.
directed by David France
A Sundance Selects release

Peter Staley in action. Photo: William Lucas Walker

That's Peter Staley--former Wall Street bond trader; later, ACT UP's rock-star activist--who not only talked the eloquent talk but walked the kickass walk along with many comrades, putting the media, pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers and politicians on notice that a community terrorized by AIDS was not going to sit quietly, simply hoping for attention and help. It was going to get in people's faces and demand the research and treatments it needed to survive.

David France's exhilarating and moving How to Survive A Plague relates the boisterous history of ACT UP--all the triumphs and missteps--with a personalizing focus on several of its leading activists. These include Staley and Mark Harrington as well as the late Bob Rafsky who died from AIDS complications in 1993. Rafsky will be remembered by most for his confrontation with presidential-hopeful Bill Clinton that led to the famous "I feel your pain" non-answer.

That scene, from a Clinton fundraiser, is highlighted in France's documentary along with many others that retell the progression of HIV/AIDS in New York's gay male community and that community's dramatic, intelligent responses. Although a sprinkling of women and people of color are shown or interviewed, France has concentrated on assembling footage and gathering oral history that reflect ACT UP as an initiative emerging from well-educated gay white men with an inherent sense of empowerment commensurate with their rage and compassion. Along the way, we do get to see and hear from female advocates and activists--media-savvy Ann Northrop, future journalist Garance Franke-Ruta and pharmaceutical chemist Iris Long, PhD, among a few others.

Essential history can easily be lost. In a climate of right-wing backlash, it can get twisted. New generations of social activists working on marriage equality, transgender rights, immigrant rights and many other progressive issues today need to learn about these shoulders upon which they stand. And we all need a blade of truth to disrupt the nasty fog of culture war that has arisen once again in our country.

[Update: Frank Bruni writes about this documentary in the March 17 New York Times--The Living After the Dying.]

See a screening of How to Survive A Plague at the 2012 New Directors/New Films Festival at the following locations:

Saturday, March 24, 9pm
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Monday, March 26, 6pm
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53r Street (between 5th And 6th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

How to Survive A Plague Web site

How to Survive A Plague Facebook page

Information on New Directors/New Films

Perform, connect, all the way live

The New York Times asks Did YouTube Kill Performance Art?

In the Internet age, when the line between "happenings" and publicity stunts has blurred, can performance art still resonate with the public?

Here are a couple of interesting selections from the four responses... 

Room for Debate: Performance Art Engages All Five Senses
by Paul Levinson, The New York Times, August 18, 2011

The Lure of Enigmatic Gestures
by Liz Kotz, The New York Times, August 18, 2011

Robert Hilferty--filmmaker, critic, activist--1959–2009

RIP Robert Hilferty 1959–2009
by Steve Smith, Night After Night, July 28, 2009

Robert Hilferty, ACT UP Member, Filmmaker and Critic, Has Died
by Michael Petrelis, The Petrelis Files, July 27, 2009

Robert Hilferty's blog:
The Hilferty Harangue: Rants, Raves and Revelations Across the Arts