We Found Love in a Hopeless Place

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Visual AIDS

Short videos about how HIV can trouble close relationships while also creating complex and necessary connections to social movements.

SVA Theatre

BROADCAST | Summer Screening Series

Visual AIDS presents BROADCAST, a free summer screening series featuring contemporary artists’ responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis through the medium of video. More info at visualaids.org/broadcast

Visual AIDS presents We Found Love in a Hopeless Place as part of BROADCAST, a free summer screening series featuring contemporary artists’ responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis through the medium of video.<h2>We Found Love in a Hopeless Place</h2><h3>Curated by What Would an HIV Doula Do?</h3><h3>Wednesday, June 29, 7pm at SVA Theatre</h3><blockquote>“If there’s one lesson to be taken from the history of organizing, it’s… the power of placing one’s body in ways that challenge empire.” — Jawanza James Williams, VOCAL NY.</blockquote>From protesting to kissing, cruising, or swallowing a bunch of pills, people living with HIV develop new relationships with ourselves and others after diagnosis. Navigating joy, anger, and acceptance, what emerges is a tension we call intimacy. We Found Love in a Hopeless Place, named after the iconic Rihanna song, frames intimacy as a public and political matter explored through a range of responses, including radicality, boredom, and keen pop sensibilities. In the videos we see how HIV can trouble close relationships while also creating complex and necessary connections to social movements. These videos are about interactions with oneself, community, and the state upon diagnosis and beyond.What Would an HIV Doula Do? is a collective of people who create culture and community in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis.Proof of full vaccination and masks are required at SVA Theatre. Learn more about SVA Theatre's COVID protocols <a href="https://svatheatre.com/about/faqs/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.

<h1>Screening Program</h1>Runtime: Approx. 51 minutesKia LaBeija, Goodnight, Kia, 2017 In Goodnight, Kia, Kia LaBeija processes a reoccurring dream of the home she shared with her mother Kwan Bennett. Bennett died of an AIDS-related illness in October of 2004, resulting in an unanticipated move that reshaped the course of her teenage daughter&#x27;s life. (5 min)Glen Fogel, 7 Years Later, 2014 Glen Fogel and his ex-boyfriend Nathan Lee discuss the events that led to their breakup while a robotic camera autonomously scans the apartment. The video is edited to look as though it is a seamless single take, a time warp in which Fogel and Lee appear in multiple places in the apartment at the same time. (4 min)Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends Mixtape (The Demo), 2017 DeShawn (an unlikely anti-hero) passes his days with spiraling epiphanies and lucid reckless Bohemianism fueled by systemic poverty and HIV ennui. In this video, he relates his philosophy of the world to an unknown caller on his landline while magically shrink-fitting a pair of recently shoplifted jeans. (8 min)Kurt Weston, Not Going Away, 2007 Kurt Weston sorts through, ingests, and injects various medications while his voiceover ruminates on his own seroconversion. In doing so, the piece sheds light on both the historic tribulations of living with HIV and AIDS as well as the current precarity that newly-diagnosed people may face. (6 min)Christopher Murray, Soneto Veitenueve, 2019The video uses a new Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 by award-winning Colombian writer Jaime Manrique. The sonnet provides an alternative context for the visual narrative of a gay Colombian man trapped in a nest of despair and self-medicating with nicotine and online compulsivity. (4 min)Beto Pérez, In the Future, 2021 In the Future tells the stories of people living with HIV in Mexico who have been unable to access treatment because of government corruption and widespread theft and looting of medication. (7 min)Gevi Dimitrakopoulou, This is Right: Zak, Life and After, 2020 This is Right: Zak, Life and After is a portrait of Zak Kostopoulos, a well-known queer AIDS activist who was publicly lynched to death in Athens in 2018. Zak&#x27;s chosen family and community highlight Zak&#x27;s activist life and the response that his murder has galvanized. (9 min)VOCAL-NY, VOCAL-NY for ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, 2018 VOCAL-NY (Voices Of Community Activists &amp; Leaders) is a New York-based grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people in order to create healthy and just communities. In this video, VOCAL explains how it uses political theater and direct action as creative tactics to address housing policies as part of their work to end the HIV and AIDS epidemic. (8 min)

<h1>BROADCAST Screening Series</h1>BROADCAST highlights curated selections from Visual AIDS’s video commissions alongside new and historical AIDS video, including the US premiere of two international projects. In tandem with the series, Visual AIDS is launching a new online archive of past video commissions at <a href="https://video.visualaids.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">video.visualaids.org</a>.BROADCAST features six unique screenings from June 8–July 9 at venues across New York City. Full details are available at <a href="https://visualaids.org/events/detail/broadcast-summer-screening-series" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">visualaids.org/broadcast</a>.
Image: Glen Fogel, Still from 7 Years Later, 2014. Commissioned by Visual AIDS for ALTERNATE ENDINGS

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We Found Love in a Hopeless Place

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