(A talkie, courtesy of TIFF Bell Lightbox, in Toronto)
I am older than the AIDS crisis. In 1981, when I was four, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identified a virus in five homosexual men in L.A. When I was five, ‘AIDS’ replaced ‘GRID’ (gay-related immune deficiency) as the accepted term for the disease in the press. I grew into my teens with the knowledge that AIDS was something lethal and terrifying; an awareness supported by public health campaigns and the media. Dramatic works by artists and writers, gay and straight, helped me appreciate who and what its victims were—and weren’t. AIDS made young people die, and that was the point.
