Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP

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Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP is a 2002 film by James Wentzy that compiles footage of ACT UP meetings and actions from the first ACT UP meeting to 2002.

Film still from Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP
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Production Information

  • Title: Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP
  • Director: James Wentzy
  • Year: 2002
  • Country: USA
  • Length: 75 min.
  • Language: English


Synopsis

"James Wentzy's in-your-face Fight Back, Fight AIDS is a compilation of footage documenting the first ACT UP meeting in 1987 on New York City's Wall Street and continues to 2002. Amateur video recording – at the demonstration level and from the private, behind-the-scenes meetings and training – reveals the astonishing camaraderie that united a politically enraged community, regardless of age, race, ethnicity or gender.

Recognizable faces among the hundreds of ACT UP activists, timelessly captured over the 15 years of footage, are likely to be moving. Particularly noteworthy is seeing activist and author Vito Russo issue a speech equating AIDS to war then demanding to know how the two landscapes differ.

Whether or not your own political views are aligned with ACT UP’s today, this infinitely relevant political group taught us to fight back against government complacency, to protest the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs, and to simply ask others, "Where is your rage?"

- San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival


Awards

Official Selection, Berlinale Panorama


Reviews

“A whole generation of community leaders lost to AIDS are not present to tell our youth about their struggles, so it is important for us to pass along their message of struggle and hope. Youth must believe they can own their health, and wish to do so before any messages about safer sex and HIV prevention are effective. Action starts with self, and I use the film Fight Back, Fight AIDS to educate youth about the struggles of those who went before them, as well as to inspire today’s youth to find their own struggles and take action!”

- Clayton Robbins, Prevention Case Worker, Saint Louis Effort for AIDS


“Fight Back, Fight AIDS...operates as an affective archive of both AIDS activists' ingenuity and the technology used to document it. Members of ACT UP frequently used the most up-to-date video equipment by charging cameras to their credit cards and then returning them for refunds after use at demonstrations...Viewers of Fight Back, Fight AIDS who were involved in ACT UP will have different responses to the text than those of us who wish we had been...For all viewers, the dating and degeneration of the video aesthetic mediate this past...Fight Back, Fight AIDS...not only records a social movement but also regenerates it.

– Lucas Hilderbrand (Retroactivism, from GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Duke University Press)


Distribution Information

Distributed by Frameline[1]


External Links

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