How To Survive A Plague

Clip description: "Journalist-turned-filmmaker David France unveils the courageous story of the activists and scientists who fought, sometimes with each other, to find a way to stop HIV from being a death sentence in "How to Survive a Plague," a U.S. Documentary Competition film at Sundance 2012."

RELATED: Longtime activist Peter Staley discusses the movie at Poz.com.

I suspect that this film will reopen old wounds for some from the infighting that led to T&Ds split from ACT UP, and the founding of TAG. We largely fell into two camps at the time, and for the most part, the film tells the story of those on just one side of that divide. But any story focused on treatment activism will never capture ACT UP's expansive body of work. I eagerly await Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman's UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT-UP, which will begin to fill out this history even more. Both of these films have a huge wall of resistance to climb - sadly, most folks don't want to hear about AIDS these days, even most gay folks. That said, in this day and age, they are desperate for some inspiration, and for stories about people telling truth to power, and changing history for the better. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE does this. See it.