Recommended Viewing

If you have time please see Rent, which was bumped from our syllabus, and other resources below which focus on the AIDS epidemic in the US and its impact on queer lives.

• Rent. Dir. Chris Columbus. By Jonathan Larson and Stephen Chbosky. Sony, 2005. Film.

A re-imagining of Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, set in late 1980s New York amidst AIDS, addiction, and poverty.

• Sex in an Epidemic. Dir. Jean Carlomusto. Outcast, 2010. Film.

Excellent documentary about how queer activism and sexual experimentation fought and ultimately changed the official and medical response to HIV.

• Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell. Dir. Matt Wolf. Polari, 2008. Film.

A film about one of my favorite musicians: his creative flourishing in the late 1980s New York art/music scene before his death of AIDS in 1992, and the archive he left.

• Act Up Oral History Archive. ACT UP, 2008. Web.

Online archive of video interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) New York, a group that was crucial in saving lives and getting attention during early days of the epidemic.

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