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Presented by director Jim Hubbard and producer Sarah Schulman, UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP documents the birth and life of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from the perspective of those in the trenches, who fought the epidemic, social indifference, government neglect, and corporate greed. Using remarkably insightful interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project, as well as rare archival footage that puts the audience on the ground with activists, UNITED IN ANGER shows how a coalition of the committed, a small group of men and women of all races and classes, came together to change the world and save each other’s lives.
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“Capturing the profound grief, sexiness, and the incredible energy of ACT UP, UNITED IN ANGER reveals the group’s complex culture”
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, film still, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP
Presented by director Jim Hubbard and producer Sarah Schulman, UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP documents the birth and life of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from the perspective of those in the trenches, who fought the epidemic, social indifference, government neglect, and corporate greed. Using remarkably insightful interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project, as well as rare archival footage that puts the audience on the ground with activists, UNITED IN ANGER shows how a coalition of the committed, a small group of men and women of all races and classes, came together to change the world and save each other’s lives. The film takes us through the planning and execution of a dozen exhilarating major actions: Seize Control of the FDA; Storm the NIH; and Stop the Church, the Die-In at St Patrick’s Cathedral, and includes a timeline of many of the other zaps and actions that forced the U.S. government and mainstream media to face and engage with the AIDS crisis. Capturing the profound grief, sexiness, and the incredible energy of ACT UP, UNITED IN ANGER reveals the group’s complex culture – meetings, rallies, affinity groups, and approaches to civil disobedience that affected a profound attitudinal shift in government, healthcare policy and society at large.
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, film still, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.
Director Jim Hubbard first filmed ACT UP at the Lesbian & Gay Pride March in New York in June, 1987; “In the early 1980s when AIDS first devastated the Gay community, I began thinking about making a film about AIDS, but was stymied because I had no intention of elbowing my way into hospital rooms to show people at their most vulnerable and victimized as the mainstream media were doing. In 1984, my ex-lover, the filmmaker, Roger Jacoby, was diagnosed. He wanted to be filmed and during the last year and a half of his life, I filmed him and when he died, I inherited his outtakes. Then ACT UP came along with its flamboyantly visual style of politics and I continued to film the organization over the years with my 16 mm camera, but real heroic effort of documenting the AIDS activist movement was carried on by the dozens of AIDS activist videographers whose work appears in United in Anger. I feel very strongly that the film is the end result of the collective work of dozens of valiant people who videotaped and edited the remarkable body of work that documents the AIDS activist movement.”
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP will have its theatrical debut on July 6th at QUAD Cinema, 34 W. 13th st, New York City.
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, film still, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, film still, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.
