The Great Hereafter

[William769]

In 1981 The New York Times began reporting on a mysterious illness that was striking down gay men. As the first victims of the disease that would eventually be called AIDS were dying, Josh Rosenzweig was coming of age as a young gay man. Rosenzweig now reflects back on the past three decades with the powerful, heartbreaking new documentary 30 Years From Here, which chronicles the trials and tribulations unleashed by the AIDS pandemic. "I want this film to jostle people out of complacency," he says. Rosenzweig, who is also senior vice president, original programming and development for here! (owned by the same parent company as The Advocate), and his team have assembled personal accounts from many of the key activists and medical experts, such as ACT UP founder Larry Kramer, choreographer-fundraiser Jerry Mitchell, and Marjorie Hill, CEO of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. All were there in the beginning and have witnessed how the disease has ravaged lives as well as the hope generated by advances in medical research. Rosenzweig tells The Advocate why he was compelled to make the film and shares what he learned in the process.


The Advocate: What was the impetus to make 30 Years From Here?
Josh Rosenzweig: A year ago when we began to plan the 2011 original production slate, we felt very strongly that we acknowledge this 30 years period with some sort of original program. At first we were going to follow the same timeline that The Advocate was creating for the magazine and Advocate.com, but as we began to work on the film it seemed to be following its own path. However, then we were faced with the Herculean task of scaling this giant monolith, so to speak. When you look back at three decades of this pandemic, the question is what part of the story do you tell? So we just jumped in and one interview led us to the next and so on... and the story slowly began to emerge organically.

There have been numerous other documentaries that look back at the ravages of AIDS. What distinguishes your film from others?
As I mentioned, AIDS is a huge topic. There are, literally, millions of stories that can be told about HIV and AIDS, and ours is just one among many... But, I think what may set this piece apart a bit from others is that it’s very New York City-centric. It is a unique combination of interviews from medical experts, activists, and everyday people who were here on the ground in the early ‘80s, working and living with this epidemic all around them — and these are the stories that we have not heard. We also felt that we wanted and needed to present the story in a somewhat matter-of-fact manner and let it speak for itself. Therefore, it is somewhat devoid of sentimentality. It’s not brutal, but I would say it is very frank.

http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Television/The_Great_Hereafter/