About

'Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!' reflects on three decades of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS, and highlights the intersection of art and activism in film and video relating to the epidemic. It brings together works that illustrate some of the critical positions linked with AIDS cultural activism — from the documentation of individual and collective trauma during the late 1980s and early 1990s, to rethinking issues of memory and representation in the contemporary setting.

The program takes place at an important moment in terms of AIDS visibility and cultural production. Since the mid-1990s, HIV has been recognised as a manageable illness, a shift in understanding that has been linked to a decline in the production of works dealing with the present-day experience of people living with HIV. Yet at the same time a form of nostalgia has led to a renewed recognition of AIDS in contemporary media, with the success of biographical films and documentaries revisiting the early days of the epidemic and the origins of the AIDS activist movement in the United States.

The program's title is borrowed from the poster/VIRUS project by Canadian artist Vincent Chevalier and activist–academic Ian Bradley-Perrin, which asks us to rethink the cultural responses that have been canonised as part of the AIDS narrative. As writer Ted Kerr has described, the poster was an articulation that "their current life chances as people living with HIV were being reduced by a focus on AIDS of the past. The stigma, health, and social realities that they experience were being ignored in lieu of a look back." Chevalier and Bradley-Perrin's phrase is used here to incite a rethinking of the visual character of AIDS more generally, shifting the emphasis from gay men's healthcare in the northern hemisphere to other histories and conversations taking place throughout the global south, where artists and filmmakers are responding to local issues of stigma, visibility and medical treatment.

QAGOMA acknowledges all the filmmakers, estates, archives and distributors who have generously provided screening materials for this program. Program curated by José Da Silva, Australian Cinémathèque.

List of Works

• Ein Virus kennt keine Moral (A Virus Knows No Morals) 1985 | Director: Rosa von Praunheim
• The ADS Epidemic 1987 | Director: John Greyson
• This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement 1987 | Director: Isaac Julien
• A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. 1988 | Director: Jerry Tartaglia
• Fear of Disclosure: The Psycho Social Implication of HIV Revelation 1989 | Directors: Phil Zwickler, David Wojnarowicz
• Le Récit d'A. (The Story of A) 1990 | Director: Esther Valiquette
• Two Marches 1991 | Director: Jim Hubbard
• Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) 1992 | Director: Marlon Riggs
• The Living End 1992 | Director: Gregg Araki
• Elegy 1993 | Director: Chris Graves
• Silverlake Life: The View from Here 1993 | Directors: Peter Friedman, Tom Joslin
• I hung back, held fire, danced and lied 1997 | Director: Tom Kalin
• Pensão Globo (World Hotel) 1997 | Director: Matthias Müller
• Sadness 1999 | Director: Tony Ayres
• Sea in the Blood 2000 | Director: Richard Fung
• Virus 2002 | Director: Churchill Madikida
• (A World Without) Pity 2003 | Director: Sunil Gupta
• Smalltown Boys 2003 | Director: Matt Wolf
• 3 Needles 2005 | Director: Thom Fitzgerald
• 中原紀事 (The Epic of the Central Plains) 2006 | Directors: Ai Xiaoming, Hu Jie
• O meu marido esta a negar (My Husband is in Denial) 2007 | Director: Rogério Manjate
• Fig Trees 2009 | Director: John Greyson
• So... when did you figure out that you had AIDS? 2010 | Director: Vincent Chevalier
• Liberaceón 2011 | Director: Chris Vargas
• Grey 2012 | Director: Dani Marti
• Buffalo Death Mask 2013 | Director: Mike Hoolboom
• E Agora? Lembra-me (What Now? Remind Me) 2013 | Director: Joaquim Pinto
• Breeden 2014 | Director: Vincent Chevalier
• Disclosure 2009/2014 | Director: Dani MartI