Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt 1989

7.20

On the eve of 1987's Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be added to a large-scale memorial quilt project. Drawing from the sea of names memorialized, director Robert Epstein focuses on the lives of six people. Alongside the intimate profiles offered, through news footage and interviews, Epstein puts the AIDS crisis in the larger context of social and government response to the disease.

1989

Guelwaar

Guelwaar 1993

6.60

Burial of a Christian political activist in a Muslim cemetary forces a conflict imbued with religious fervor.

1993

Fortini/Cani

Fortini/Cani 1977

5.30

The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi

1977

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives 1977

4.80

More than two dozen men and women of various backgrounds, ages, and races talk to the camera about being gay or lesbian. Their stories are arranged in loose chronology: early years, fitting in (which for some meant marriage), coming out, establishing adult identities, and reflecting on how things have changed and how things should be.

1977