SXSW Film

Sex Positive

D: Daryl Wein; with Richard Berkowitz, Larry Kramer, Edmund White, Joseph Sonnabend, Bill Stackhouse, Richard Dworkin

If you don't know who Richard Berkowitz is, you should. He started his life as a wild and nearly famous S&M hustler, sweating it out in the Eighties. Funny hair, red velvet ropes on all the clubs, and the gay community alive with a sexual revolution. Berkowitz witnessed AIDS firsthand, still new: a rampant party-boy disease that was now picking off and killing friend after friend after friend. Berkowitz decided to do something, long before the rest of the community was ready to acknowledge the epidemic. In short, he invented safe sex – backed by readily challenged doctor's diagnoses, fellow activists, and the bravery to explore safer sex practices, against all opposition. This is the story of sex, betrayal, mortality, and his belief in saving lives, even when no one in the world wanted to listen.

Friday, March 14th, 9pm, ACC