Known for Acting
The work of sex-positive HIV/AIDS activists in the 1980s inspires Queer New Yorkers to revive and reinvent safer sex practices during the early months of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
After the Stonewall riots and at the height of the gay liberation movement in America, an entire generation were busy celebrating their newfound emancipation, unaware of an impending epidemic. A disease that seemed determined to wipe out an entire generation of gay men, was largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media. Gaetan Dugas was a French-Canadian flight attendant, who offered to help early scientific research into the origins of AIDS. An unfortunate series of events followed and he would be vilified as Patient Zero, the man who gave us AIDS.
Artist and designer Yolanda Sonnabend resides in decaying splendor in the last un-renovated house in a posh suburb of London. Surrounded by fifty years of painting, sculpture, frames, fabric, books, the archeologia and the ephemera of her frenzied imagination, Yolanda says "I'm a prisoner of rubbish". Meanwhile, her older brother has moved in with his grand piano.
In the aftermath of Stonewall, a newly politicized Vito Russo found his voice as a gay activist and critic of LGBTQ+ representation in the media. He went on to write "The Celluloid Closet", the first book to critique Hollywood's portrayals of gays on screen. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Vito became a passionate advocate for justice via the newly formed ACT UP, before his death in 1990.
Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
