Sex Positive can be found in
London.
The documentary winner of Outfest 2008,
Los Angele's Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, is crossing the pond in
search of a wider audience at The Times sponsored London Film
Festival.
Director Daryl Wein's documentary Sex
Positive focuses in on early safe sex pioneer Richard Berkowitz.
His life of hustling on the streets of New York came to a crushing
end when AIDS started its infectious assault in the 1980s. Berkowitz
was one of the first gay men who demanded answers about the disease
from the government. His safe sex message, however, was met with
resistance from men who were not ready to leave the party.
The film culls together rare footage of
Berkowitz along with new interviews to piece together his
contributions to the invention of safe sex. Berkowitz's anger and
frustration at gay men who rejected his safe sex message is also on
display.
Berkowitz molded his safe sex message
off Dr. Joseph Sonnabend's pioneering AIDS research, which suggested
as early as 1983 that anal sex among gay men was fueling the
epidemic.
“It was Richard Berkowitz's book,
Stayin' Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, that forced me to
face my own ignorance,” wrote filmmaker Wein. “Like most of my
friends, I had always thought of safe sex as a government invented
advocacy program, but I was enlightened to find out it was not the
government at all but the tireless efforts of so many fervent
activist who paved the way for change.”
“Both in the government and the gay
community, the widespread silence during the early years of AIDS is
absolutely shocking. What Richard taught me, among many other
things, was that the most promiscuous gay men were the pioneers of
the safe sex movement”
Sex Positive will be screened in
London on October 24th and 27th.