Rob Epstein's searing Oscar-winning documentary profiles six people who died of AIDS, helping to put a human face to an illness that, when this movie first aired in 1989, was cloaked in fear and mystery. Using the AIDS Memorial Quilt as his starting point, Epstein, with the help of narrator Dustin Hoffman's dignity and gravitas, humanizes the disease and illustrates its carnage, showing how it devastates famiies & communitities.
Rated NR     1 hr. 19 min.     1989
5 stars. excellent & powerful film. reccommend that everyone watch this at least once.  I have attached a speech by Vito Russo (it's on the Special Features). It was very moving and I wanted to share it with you all.
 
Speech by Vito Russo
Video Transcript of speech: ACT UP Demonstration in ALBANY NY, May 9, 1988
and the ACT UP Demonstration at the Department of Health and Human Services, Washington D.C. October 10, 1988
VITO
RUSSO: A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card,
which means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the
other day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the
attendant asked what his disability was and he said, I have AIDS. And
the attendant said, no you don't, if you had AIDS, you'd be home dying.
And so, I wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not
dying.
You know, for the last
three years, since I was diagnosed, my family thinks two things about
my situation. One, they think I'm going to die, and two, they think
that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to
stop that. And they're wrong, on both counts.
So,
if I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from homophobia. If I'm dying
from anything, I'm dying from racism. If I'm dying from anything, it's
from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are
preventing an end to this crisis. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying
from Jesse Helms. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the
President of the United States. And, especially, if I'm dying from
anything, I'm dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines
and television shows, which are interested in me, as a human interest
story -- only as long as I'm willing to be a helpless victim, but not
if I'm fighting for my life.
If
I'm dying from anything -- I'm dying from the fact that not enough
rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a
shit. You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the
twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which
is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches.
Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that
you've lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn't
happening to them. They're walking the streets as though we weren't
living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the
screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one
else seems to be noticing.
And
it's worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a
shared experience. This war has not united us, it's divided us. It's
separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people
with AIDS from the rest of the population.
Two
and a half years ago, I picked up Life Magazine, and I read an
editorial which said, "it's time to pay attention, because this disease
is now beginning to strike the rest of us." It was as if I wasn't the
one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has
changed to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real
people in this country.
It's not
happening to us in the United States, it's happening to them -- to the
disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they get.
The media tells them that they don't have to care, because the people
who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four times --
The New York Times has published editorials saying, don't panic yet,
over AIDS -- it still hasn't entered the general population, and until
it does, we don't have to give a shit.
And
the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they don't spend
those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out how to
get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it at,
and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source? And,
how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it?
Because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit.
And
they don't sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who are
wearing rubber gloves, who won't put a microphone on you, because it
isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit. And they don't have
their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the
news and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isn't
happening to them, and they don't give a shit.
And
they don't spend their waking hours going from hospital room to
hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly -- of
neglect and bigotry, because it isn't happening to them and they don't
have to give a shit. They haven't been to two funerals a week for the
last three or four or five years -- so they don't give a shit, because
it's not happening to them.
And we
read on the front page of The New York Times last Saturday that Anthony
Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment haven't
even been tested in the last two years because he can't afford to hire
the people to test them. We're supposed to be grateful that this story
has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why some
reporter didn't dig up that story and print it 18 months ago, before
Fauci got dragged before a Congressional hearing .
How
many people are dead in the last two years, who might be alive today,
if those drugs had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the
country are busy printing government press releases. They don't give a
shit, it isn't happening to them -- meaning that it isn't happening to
people like them -- the real people, the world-famous general public we
all keep hearing about.
Legionnaire's
Disease was happening to them because it hit people who looked like
them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as them. And that
fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the front page of
every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it stayed there until
that mystery got solved.
All I
read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white heterosexual
population is not at risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read
tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still account for the
overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those people at risk.
And
can somebody please tell me why every single penny allocated for
education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that are directed
almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers -- who they keep
telling us are not at risk!
Can
somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a major
network in this country, about the impact of this disease, is not about
the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the impact
of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight years,
every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover stories on
AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is raised?
Why,
for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in high
schools has eliminated any gay positive material, before being approved
by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single public
information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment sources
has ignored specific homosexual content?
Why
is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every
billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men?
Don't believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done
it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV drug
users are not all politicized people living in New York and San
Francisco. Members of minority populations, including so called
sophisticated gay men are abysmally ignorant about AIDS.
If
it is true that gay men and IV drug users are the populations at risk
for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and
prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not
happening. We are being allowed to die, while low risk populations are
being panicked -- not educated, panicked -- into believing that we
deserve to die.
Why are we here
together today? We're here because it is happening to us, and we do
give a shit. And if there were more of us AIDS wouldn't be what it is
at this moment in history. It's more than just a disease, which
ignorant people have turned into an excuse to exercise the bigotry they
have always felt.
It is more than
a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is really a test of us,
as a people. When future generations ask what we did in this crisis,
we're going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we
have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come
after us.
Someday, the AIDS crisis
will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes -- when that day
has come and gone, there'll be people alive on this earth -- gay people
and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the
story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all
over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought
and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live
and be free.
So, I'm proud to be
with my friends today and the people I love, because I think you're all
heroes, and I'm glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase
from Michael Callen's song: all we have is love right now, what we
don't have is time.
In a lot of
ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there -- they're so
busy putting out fires and taking care of people on respirators, that
they don't have the time to take care of all the sick people. We're so
busy putting out fires right now, that we don't have the time to talk
to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next
day, and next month and the next week and the next year.
And,
we're going to have to find the time to do that in the next few months.
And, we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after we kick
the shit out of this disease, we're all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.

VITO RUSSO