{"id":231,"date":"2012-06-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/we-were-here\/"},"modified":"2025-02-19T18:57:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T02:57:03","slug":"we-were-here","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/we-were-here\/","title":{"rendered":"We Were Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"film-content\" class=\"clearfix\">\n<p><i>We Were Here<\/i> documents the arrival in San Francisco of what was then called the &#8220;Gay Plague&#8221; in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic, as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"fm-content\" class=\"clearfix\">Early in the epidemic, San Francisco&#8217;s compassionate, multifaceted, and creative response to AIDS became known as &#8220;The San Francisco Model.&#8221; The city&#8217;s activist and progressive infrastructure that evolved out of the 1960s, combined with San Francisco&#8217;s highly politicized gay community centered around the Castro Street neighborhood, helped overcome obstacles in a nation both homophobic and lacking in universal healthcare. In its suffering, San Francisco mirrors the experience of so many American cities during those years. In its response, The San Francisco Model remains a standard for attaining a healthier, more just, and more humane society.<\/div>\n<p>In 2011, the United States marked 30 years since AIDS descended as a mysterious &#8220;gay cancer&#8221; that mystified the medical community. Like an unrelenting hurricane, the epidemic roiled San Francisco for two decades, and only began to ease its grip with medical advancements in the late 1990s. The death years of AIDS left the city ravaged and exhausted, yet, as in most of the developed world, the worst seems past. Though thousands are still living with HIV, and new infections continue at an alarming rate, the relentless suffering of the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s has given way to a kind of calm and a degree of willful amnesia. What lessons do the early years still offer us?<\/p>\n<p><i>We Were Here<\/i> focuses on five individuals, all of whom lived in San Francisco prior to the epidemic. Their lives changed in unimaginable ways when their beloved city changed from a hotbed of sexual freedom and social experimentation into the epicenter of a terrible and largely mysterious plague. From their different vantage points as caregivers, activists, researchers, as friends and lovers of the afflicted, and as people with AIDS themselves, the interviewees share stories that are not only intensely personal, but that also illuminate the much larger themes of that era: the political and sexual complexities, the terrible emotional toll, and the role of women \u2014 particularly lesbians \u2014 in caring for and fighting for their gay brothers.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h4>The Filmmaker<\/h4>\n<div id=\"fm-content\" class=\"clearfix\">David Weissman moved to San Francisco in 1976, when the city began to be referred to as the &#8220;Gay Mecca.&#8221; He was at Harvey Milk&#8217;s camera store on the night of his election, and at the victory party for the No on 6 Campaign \u2014 the first major electoral victory for the emerging gay movement. Devastated by Milk&#8217;s assassination just months later, David became more active in SF politics \u2014 working on local political campaigns.\u00a0In 1981, David began taking filmmaking courses at City College of San Francisco. His short film <i>Song From an Angel<\/i> featured San Francisco performer Rodney Price doing a song and tap-dance about his own death, two weeks before he died of AIDS. In 1998, David teamed up with his friend Bill Weber to co-direct the feature length documentary, <i>The Cockettes<\/i>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When AIDS arrived in San Francisco in 1981, it decimated a community, but also brought people together in inspiring and moving ways to support and care for one another and to fight for dignity and a cure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1254,1219,1288,1226],"class_list":["post-231","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-disease-and-mental-health","topic-health-and-environment","topic-lgbtq","topic-social-justice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>We Were Here | San Francisco During AIDS Crisis | Independent Lens | 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