In honor of World AIDS Day on December 1st, Northwest Film Forum presents a series of three films by the seminal and pioneering Queer German filmmaker, Rosa Von Praunheim. A filmmaker as much as an activist, Rosa Von Praunheim’s films present a wide range of emotional perspectives, from biting and direct criticism of politicians withholding life-saving medication, to extremely campy (thought also not without criticism) musicals about awful nurses working in AIDS patient wards.

This series presents three of Rosa Von Praunheim’s films on HIV/AIDS. A Virus Knows No Morals, which feels like if John Waters made a musical in Berlin with an even more vicious and pointed satire that sets its sights on just about everyone and takes no prisoners, while Positive and Silence = Death are powerful documents of the real-life responses of gay activists and artists on the streets of New York City to the AIDS epidemic as they fight for their right to live as their leaders turn a blind eye to mass death.

Co-Presented with Fruitbowl Podcast 

A VIRUS KNOWS NO MORALS

(Rosa Von Praunheim, 1986, Germany, 84 min, in German with English Subtitles)

Nurses on the night shift roll dice to see which AIDS patient will die next. The owner of a gay bathhouse gets Kaposi’s Sarcoma but tries to keep his mind on profits. An epidemic victim is harassed by a reporter on his death bed – he sticks her with a contaminated syringe. The government opens a quarantine called Hell Gay Land. Gay terrorists kidnap the Minister of Health. A black comedy filled with everybody’s worst fears, A Virus Knows No Morals is Rosa von Praunheim’s most controversial film to date: a savagely funny burlesque on the AIDS crisis. Irreverent yet deadly serious, the filmmaker covers just about every aspect of AIDS and its effects, as well as the rumors surrounding it. Since the 1960’s von Praunheim has produced a provocative body of underground films, making him one of the New German Cinema’s most original artists. “Brave and Vicious – Armed Camp!”

POSITIVE & SILENCE = DEATH

(Rosa Von Praunheim, 1990, Germany & United States, Total Run Time 120 min, in English)

Upon the global outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, director Rosa Von Praunheim set his sights on making films in direct response to the inaction of the powerful and the action of those directly affected by HIV/AIDS. Positive and Silence = Death, the first two parts of Von Praunheim’s AIDS Trilogy, focus on the lived experiences and reactions of the queer community in New York City as they fight against a local and national government that allowed thousands of people to die without a second thought.

POSITIVE (1990)

This film powerfully documents New York City’s gay community’s response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government’s failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

SILENCE = DEATH (1990)

Featuring appearances and performances by artists such as David Wojnarowicz, Rafael Gamba, Paul Smith, Peter Kunz, Allen Ginsberg, Don Moffett, Bern Boyle, Keith Haring and Emilio Cubeiro, Rosa Von Praunheim’s follow-up to Positive shifts focus to the various responses to the AIDS crisis in New York City from the arts community specifically.

“Praunheim is just the man for the job he has taken on with “Silence=Death” and “Positive”: he has the breadth of vision, the compassion and the militance and, yes, the sense of humor necessary to tackle the AIDS epidemic in all its aspects.” – Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times