UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP STUDY GUIDE

UNIT 1: PROJECTS AND EXERCISES

Individual Project #1: The ACT UP Oral History Project
The oral histories used in United in Anger are excerpted from much longer interviews with surviving members of ACT UP.  Those interviews were conducted by Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman and are collected, along with their transcripts, at the ACT UP Oral History Project website.

From the film, chose one person you are interested in getting to know better.  Locate their full oral history, then read the entire transcript.

Write a summary of the transcript and then a response telling what interested you most about this person.

Group Project #1: How to Tell a Story?
The director of United in Anger made many choices about how to tell the story of ACT UP.  You have already explored Hubbard’s reasons for his artistic choices.

As a group, discuss other possibilities for making a movie about ACT UP.  What kind of film would you make?  Would you be drawn to documentary or narrative film?  What artistic decisions would you make about what you want a viewer to see, hear, and feel in your version of the ACT UP film?  Who would the intended audience for your film be, and how would you get them to see it?

Individual/ Group Project #2: Your ACT UP Timeline
 United in Anger also incorporates a timeline that charts the evolution of AIDS activism over the past 25 years.  We will return in Unit 3 to this activist timeline to examine the many demonstrations and milestones of ACT UP.  For now though, simply create a timeline of your own that spans the same time period.  What was happening during those years, either to you personally or to the larger culture?  At first glance, how does the history of ACT UP fit into your personal or cultural history?

Hosted Timeline Template goes here