What’s Showing Today?

Friday, May 6, 2016

Featured Screening: United in Anger: A History of Act Up! at The Film-makers’ Coop. Post by
Mary Billyou:

Tonight The Film-makers’ Coop screens Jim Hubbard’s staggering United in Anger: A History of
Act Up!. Over ten years in the making, the film organizes an immense amount of multiple-source
footage shot during the most urgent period of the AIDS Crisis: when awareness turned into
anger and people began literally fighting for their lives.

Every Monday, The New York Lesbian and Gay Center became a haven for those living with
loss, fear and isolation. Outside, TV news anchors were reporting that most Americans were in
favor of quarantining (i.e., internment camps) and even tattooing people with AIDS. Opposing
this regressive nightmare, The NYLG Center made a space for energy, ideas, brainstorming, job
networking, flirting, and cruising. Knowledge was produced. Positions were taken.
Announcements made. Eventually the space crowded from one hundred people to over four
hundred, turning into a makeshift school for discussion on different approaches to social conflict
as well as a training space for civil disobedience.

Coalition-building was one of the defining characteristics of Act Up (it is part of its moniker: Aids
Coalition to Unleash Power). The whole group couldn’t act without the support of innumerable,
close-knit community groups. Called Affinity Groups, these small groups of like-minded people
were allowed to do what they wanted. As a safety structure, they created familiarity and trust so
that spontaneous action could be taken at any time.

Tangled in red tape, chanting, “We Die They Do Nothing,” these activists understood that sexual
freedom had to be defended and that healthcare is a human right. Witnessing their courage is
exciting: seizing of the FDA in Rockville, MD; dying-in at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; the multiple
actions on Wall Street; entering the Department of Health & Human Services. A larger vision is
revealed: we must create a world where people who need healthcare can get it. We need to
include the needs of women, the poor, the homeless, drug users, and people with AIDS. —Mary
Billyou