A film by Jim Hubbard

UNITED IN ANGER is the first feature-length documentary to explore the historic and on-going contribution of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP). This vanguard AIDS activist organization used innovative direct action strategies to successfully transform the AIDS crisis in the United States. The film will not only document the heroism and tenacity of ordinary people, but also, by investigating the essential techniques through which ACT UP created change, it is intended to inspire others to use direct action as a means to social transformation.

UNITED IN ANGER focuses on how a community confronting an epidemic of a new deadly disease and a hostile government, joined together to force societal change and save each other's lives.

This film is rooted in two crucial bodies of work:

1. ACT UP Oral History Project — For the past four years, Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman have been interviewing surviving members of ACT UP, New York. The website, www.actuporalhistory.org, features 65 of these interviews.

2. AIDS Activist Video Collection of the New York Public Library — Jim Hubbard spent years gathering and preserving hundreds of hours of AIDS film and video. Under the auspices of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, he created the AIDS Activist Video Collection of the NYPL, which now contains over 1000 hours of archival footage. http://catnyp.nypl.org/search/.b7272439/.b7272439/1%2C1%2C1%2CB/l856~b7272439&FF=&1%2C0%2C%2C1%2C0

With these foundational materials, Jim Hubbard has begun the process of making a feature length film: UNITED IN ANGER, named for the principle of unity that began every ACT UP meeting:

"ACT UP is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger
and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.

Utilizing the above-articulated strategy of combining archival footage and contemporary interview, UNITED IN ANGER, will employ the following structure:

1. A short, opening montage history of ACT UP/New York

2. A short contextualization of the situation that created ACT UP, using both archival footage and interview. This will include:

a. The abandonment of People With AIDS by President Reagan and his administration
b. The initial hostility of the medical profession, inadequate hospital infrastructure, and lack of research
c. Exploitative and neglectful media coverage—especially the New York Times lack of coverage of the AIDS crisis.
d. Lack of support by families, employers, local government, educational system.

Here we will explore how the social context of oppression and death led to the new psychological and political mindset of the gay and AIDS communities that allowed a mass direct action movement to emerge.

3. The development of ACT UP's direct action strategies focusing on key events in the organization's growth.

4. Finally, the film will fully explore the larger questions plaguing movements that become successful. Once victories are won for the most privileged constituencies, to what extent is universal access to those victories part of their responsibility? This section also will address the long term consequences of the deaths of so many of its members, on the ability of the organization to stay effective Because the simultaneity of many divergent actions created the whole of ACT UP, highlighting a handful of living personalities would not adequately convey the group's consciousness. But, because the shadow of mass death and the profound legacy of loss are the foundation of how survivors understand their ACT UP experience, Hubbard has chosen to focus on the stories of seven prominent AIDS activist who were killed by the disease:

Ray Navarro — Ray was a Latino artist and a pioneer in AIDS video. He endured his lover's death, his own blindness and final demise when still in his 20s.

Ortez Alderson — an African-American gay man who was an early participant in ACT UP, came from a long history of activism in his native Chicago.

Aldyn McKean — a white actor, and ACT UP heartthrob who became a spokesperson for the organization.

Bob Rafsky — a Jewish advertising executive and father, an outspoken and influential member, he was emotionally expressive about his own illness in a way that voiced many silenced feelings for the broader membership.

Jon Greenberg — a young Jewish artist who spearheaded the movement for alternative treatments at a time when most AIDS meds were ineffective, highly toxic, or both.

Tim Bailey — a white activist whose request for a political funeral, led to ACT UP carrying his coffin through the city streets, resulting in a dramatic police confrontation.

Katrina Haslip — a heterosexual, African-American woman, who, while incarcerated, became politicized by ACE, an AIDS activist organization located in Bedford Hills Women's Prison.

This selection underscores the diversity of ACT-UP, tells the story of its most dramatic political actions, and gives survivors the opportunity to convey the trauma of the mass death experience as part of their process towards social change.

UNITED IN ANGER will be a rich, complex, emotionally and politically riveting film that empowers contemporary audiences by embracing the psychology and active experience of creating social change. While rooted in history, it will be fully alive and engaged with our contemporary moment. UNITED IN ANGER will reveal the heroism of daily life, when ordinary people rose to the challenge of their own time.