PRODUCTION UPDATE (SARAH SCHULMAN)
Jim has just finished the film and we are waiting to hear from the Berlin Film Festival where we hope to hold its world premiere. It’s the end of ten years of talking, interviewing, collecting archival footage, and the end of three intense years of editing and talking over the history of ACT UP, how to portray it.
We’ve held numerous screenings in Jim’s tiny studio for friends and strangers as the film has gone through numerous incarnations, and now that we have a final print, we want to show it to somebody, but who?
One dark and stormy evening I am coming home from teaching night school on Staten Island with my colleague, queer theorist Matt Brim. We’re riding the night bus talking about our students at the College of Staten Island – how amazing they are, and how little opportunity they have. And suddenly we come up with the idea of showing UNITED IN ANGER to our students, as the film’s very first ever invited screening.
So we give Jim clear ferry directions and Matt’s Queer Theory class and my Intro to Women’s Studies class pour into the best room on the whole CSI campus, the large screening room.
Before us are about fifty students. Mostly black, Latin, immigrant and working-class white women, and a few men. They range in age from 18 to 56. There is a special feeling to the evening as Matt introduces us to the students. I then explain to them that Jim is the director of this new film. No one else has seen it yet. And he really wants to hear what they do and don’t understand. That he’s come here to learn what they think about the film, and so I ask them to take it very seriously. And they do.
It’s the first time either Jim or I have seen it on a big screen and the film is powerful, intense, complex and yet heroic.
After the 83 minutes, the lights come up and the questions begin.
First “What is the cocktail?” We explain and make a notes to clarify that in the film
Then “What does PWA stand for?” We explain. Duly note.
And then the students start talking and asking freely, and they are incredible. They get it! It’s powerful. They understand what those people on screen went through. They have lots of ideas, lots of questions, lots of suggestions- they feel ownership of The History of ACT UP, exactly as we wished them to.
We ride the ferry home together ecstatic. The film works!
Now we have to wait to see if The Berlin Film Festival curators connect as well as our students on Staten Island.
[As it turned out, our friends at the Berlinale treated the film rather shabbily. I’m not sure they ever looked at it. I only learned that the film had been rejected by reading the press release from the Berlinale. No matter, the World Premiere took place at the Museum of Modern Art in front of a hugely enthusiastic audience filled with ACT UPpers. There could not have been a more perfect setting for the World Premiere. — Jim Hubbard]