by CYD NOVA
United in Anger, a new documentary about ACT UP is hitting the film festival circuit.
This is the story my generation has been waiting to see.
I started getting involved in AIDS activism and work in 2002 at the age of 17 – ten years ago, but still long after ACT UP was the force of intensity I later came to obsessively study. When I first became aware of the group, I felt a sense of loss about not having been there, even as I was grateful to not live in an era when the AIDS crisis was decimating my community with that same degree of brutality.
ACT UP: the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power described itself as a “diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.” United in Anger illuminates how ACT UP exemplified an era in which queer politics were community driven, inclusive, sexy, unrepentant, and brilliantly dangerous. The energy of the film replicates that of the movement.
United in Anger, produced by Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman, is composed of footage from a wide range of video artists, activists, and collectives, including DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists) and Testing the Limits, combined with contemporary interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project.
