NARRATOR: In an era when much of America
turned a blind eye to the AIDS epidemic's devastation,
cinema provided a beacon of hope for those who needed it most.
Aren't you the entertainer?
Why don't you organize something?
Well, look at you, being all useful and [BLEEP]..
NARRATOR: On this IMDbrief, we'll
download the history of the first movies
to raise our collective awareness of HIV/AIDS.
In the early 1980s, as Washington and the White House
refused to acknowledge those suffering and dying,
activists in the gay community fight to be heard.
By 1985, the tides begin to change,
as Rock Hudson, a movie star of Hollywood's Golden Age,
confirms that he has the disease.
He dies just a few short months later in October.
That same year, queer filmmaker, Arthur J. Bressan Jr.,
who had been making gay-themed films since the late 1960s,
writes and directs Buddies, about a friendship
between a man dying of AIDS and the volunteer
assigned to his bedside.
Low budget and only screening at a handful of art theaters
and festivals, it's the first film to address
the pandemic head on.
Why should I want the world to see me?
Well, it beats hiding.
NARRATOR: But it's November 1985's
An Early Frost that brings the issue into American homes.
An NBC TV movie starring Aidan Quinn, Gena Rowlands and Ben
Gazzara, An Early Frost attempts to dispel misconceptions
about AIDS communicability in a pointed scene
that depicts Quinn's Michael trying
to show his mother affection.
Dad's right, Mom.
You might catch it just by looking at me.
NARRATOR: 1986's Parting Glances stars Steve Buscemi
in a day-in-the-life look at a gay New
Yorker who has the disease, but keeps
his acerbic sense of humor.
While 1989's Longtime Companion opens with The New York Times'
first article about what was then being referred
to as, "the gay cancer."
Then follows Campbell Scott, Dermot Mulroney, Bruce Davison
and Mary-Louise Parker over the course
of that first painful decade of the pandemic.
Welcome to Living with AIDS.
[APPLAUSE]
Two landmark documentaries are also released in 1989.
Best Doc Oscar-winner, Common Threads, about the AIDS
memorial quilt. And the experimentally poetic,
Tongues Untied, about the often ignored issues
that Black gay men face in this new era.
We are now entering the fifth dimension
of our sexual consciousness.
NARRATOR: 1993 is another watershed year.
First, HBO's And the Band Played On, turns Randy Shilts' book
that chronicles the early AIDS epidemic
into a docudrama with Matthew Modine and Ian McKellen.
Then filmmaker Derek Jarman dives
inward for Blue, an arthouse exploration
of his own experiences with the disease
that left him blind to all colors except shades of blue.
Oh, blue, come forth.
NARRATOR: As it happened with so many of these artists,
the success could not be long enjoyed.
And Jarman dies just months after his film premieres.
Then comes Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia, the Tom Hanks
and Denzel Washington legal drama that wins two Academy
Awards in 1994, including Best Actor for Hanks,
and grosses over $200 million, escalating
to a worldwide audience the sad truths of AIDS,
our prejudices about the disease,
and the overall lack of action.
You get to be a part of justice being done.
NARRATOR: At the same time, Philadelphia misrepresents
medical facts, and the producers had to settle a lawsuit
with the family of Geoffrey Bowers, an attorney
and activist who died from AIDS in 1987
in circumstances that clearly inspired Hanks' character.
Even with these missteps, the film elevates this conversation
and more voices could be heard.
Now this merely scratches the surface
on that, on the struggles and on the triumphs of these films,
filmmakers, and their subjects.
All of the aforementioned titles belong on your Watchlist,
along with these.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This tragedy, it taught us how to be humble,
it taught us how to be honest, it
taught us how to love in spite of what's
at the end of the tunnel.
You know how to be a little bit more
considerate of another person.
NARRATOR: For more history downloads and trending tales,
stay glued to IMDb.com/IMDbrief.