Women & AIDS
The videos and posters presented here make manifest the myriad ways in which women were an integral part of the AIDS crisis – first, and foremost, as People with AIDS, but also as leaders of the AIDS Activist Movement, and as care-givers. The footage highlights the 4-year campaign to change the CDC definition of AIDS, which ignored diseases that affected women, intravenous drug users and people of color. Because the definition was used as the basis of access to healthcare and to social services in the United States and around the world, millions of women died needlessly early owing to the malevolent disregard for the value of women’s lives.
For more information please check out the publication Women, AIDS, and Activism by the ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group on the Internet Archive or HathiTrust.
Documentation
March 2, 1989 Jamie Bauer and Alexis Danzig talk about Safe Sex. Deb Levine speaks about Women & AIDS in prison, Marion Banzhaf, Maxine Wolfe, Catherine Gund and Zoe Leonard also present. (NYPL Tape # 01114-A) For more information, see www.aubinpictures.com or email info@aubinpictures.com
March 2, 1989 Zoe Leonard presents on AIDS and Sex Work. Ann Northrop talks about Adolescents and AIDS. Q&A with all the presenters. (NYPL Tape # 01114-B) For more information, see www.aubinpictures.com or email info@aubinpictures.com
Shot by Ellen Spiro. January 8-9, 1990 ACT UP joins in protesting the anti-sodomy laws in Atlanta. Begins with footage of airplane travel and arrival in Atlanta; continues with protests, speeches, demonstrations and arrests. Also contains TV newscasts of sodomy laws protests. Continues with the first ACT UP demonstration and protest at the CDC (the federal Centers for Disease Control). (NYPL Tape # 01295-A)
Shot by Ellen Spiro. January 9, 1990 Additional footage of ACT UP’s first demonstration and protest at the CDC (the Federal Centers for Disease Control). (NYPL Tape #01295-B)
December 3, 1990 ACT UP returns for a second national action against the CDC (Centers for Disease Control). Begins with footage of early morning demonstrations in front of classrooms on the campus of Emory University before the noon-time CDC Action. Continues with speeches; demonstrations; office takeovers; civil disobedience against the CDC and arrests by police. The action took place despite the cold, driving rain that continued throughout the day. The dramatic takeover of Dan Hoth's office starts at 21:06 [note: Image ends at 43:47 while sound continues until 52:58.] Footage shot by Ellen Spiro. (NYPL Tape #01294)
Footage shot by James Wentzy. 1. ACT UP demonstration against the New York City Department of Health and Hospitals. 2. ACT UP demonstration against the New York State Department of Corrections in Albany, NY on May 3, 1991 begins at 25:28. Interview with Katrina Haslip begins at 52:25 (Tape #jw0275 dinkins DOCS arrests cuomo INS)
By the Women's AIDS Video Enterprise (WAVE): Aida Matta, Carmen Perez, Sharon Penceal, Marcia Edwards, Juanita Mohammed, Alexandra Juhasz, Glenda Smith-Hasty. Supported by the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force. Caregivers and Women with AIDS talk about their experiences and give advice. A deeply personal, revelatory and emotionally powerful work. (NYPL Tape #01069 and #1165-A)
Produced by Catherine Gund and Debra Levine in 1992. An empowering look at HIV-positive women making the transition from prison to independent living, "I’m You, You’re Me" focuses on ACE OUT, a peer counseling, support and advocacy network founded in 1992. ACE OUT continued and expanded the work of ACE (AIDS Counseling and Education), an organization founded at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, the largest women's prison in New York state. (NYPL Tape #01166-B and #01068)
Debra Levine & Catherine (Saalfield) Gund, 11 min., 1993
Memorial tape for Katrina Haslip, an AIDS activist who fought literally until the end of her life to change the conditions for women with AIDS and women in prison. She died of AIDS on December 2, 1992. (NYPL Tape #01134)
Made by Catherine Gund & Zoe Leonard. Keep Your Laws Off My Body juxtaposes footage of a lesbian couple and police activity at AIDS demonstrations with talk about the restrictions to bodily freedom. (NYPL Tape # 01067 and #01166-A) For more information, see www.aubinpictures.com or email info@aubinpictures.com
Shot by Jim Hubbard on December 10, 1989. In this tape, Maxine Wolfe and Sarah Schulman discuss their histories of work in leftist movements, the Women's Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement, Reproductive Rights and ACT UP. In late 1988, I received a grant from The Kitchen in the form of a Video-8 camera. I intended to use it to make an Oral History of ACT UP. I did 6 interviews with 8 ACT UPpers. The footage totaled 10 hours and then the filmmaker in me thought "I'll never be able to edit this" and I stopped filming. The ACT UP Oral History Project is a corrective to that lack of insight. (NYPL Tape #01142-A and 01142-B)
Process footage from video production exercises by the Women's AIDS Video Enterprise (WAVE), conducted at the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force. 1990.
Intimate and tender self-portraits of each of the women in WAVE (the Women's AIDS Video Experience).
A group of people from ACT UP invade and take over the New York City offices of the CDC. Shot by James Wentzy and John Schabel. (NYPL Tape #JW0195)
