Meet the man who invented safe sex in
director Daryl Wein's Sex Positive, opening Friday in select
theaters.
Wein's documentary Sex Positive
focuses 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 puzzle 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, the Outstanding
Documentary Feature winner of Outfest 2008, opens in select theaters
Friday, March 20.
Gay Entertainment Report is a feature
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