David France, the director of How To
Survive A Plague, has credited AIDS activism for creating today's
LGBT visibility.
Plague, which captures the rise
and success of HIV/AIDS advocacy groups ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To
Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group), first premiered at
Sundance 2012 and has been nominated for Best Documentary at the 85th
Academy Awards.
The powerful movie pieces together
archival footage to tell the story of two coalitions – ACT UP and
TAG – “whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death
sentence into a manageable condition.”
In discussing the film with CBS News,
France said the government's initial response to the epidemic was so
anemic because gay people were virtually invisible.
“At the very beginning of AIDS, gay
people had no role in civic life,” France said. “There were no
known gay people in culture, there were no actors, there were no
people in the news. We as a community, we were invisible. And
that's one of the things that allowed the government to take no
action in the early days.”
“If it weren't for really the
groundwork that was laid by ACT-UP and AIDS activism that took to the
ground to declare in the middle of this dark, dark period that gay
and lesbian people were deserving of basic and fundamental rights.
Really if it weren't for the story that we see in How To Survive a
Plague, we would not be able to enjoying the full arrival of gay
people to contemporary culture that we have today.”
(Watch
the full interview.)