Documentary recalling earliest days of HIV/AIDS epidemic returns to Denver

We Were Here documents the onset of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. For those of us who lived through it, this film will remind us of where we’ve been.

I was a newly divorced and just-out 27-year-old in 1986. Watching this film was extremely cathartic, and a dynamic reminder of the time when HIV and AIDS diagnoses were almost always a fatal, and swift in their effects. During my first year “out” I witnessed of eleven men I had just come to know. By 1990, thirty friends — mostly men and two women — and countless acquaintances were gone.

The film reminds of the swift and selfless response of the lesbian community who came forward as caregivers, blood donors and activists — lesbians are one of the populations least likely to be impacted by HIV.

This documentary illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed. It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through and responded to the onset of AIDS. We Were Here opens a window of understanding to those who have only vague notions of what transpired in those early years.

This year, 2011, marks 30 years since AIDS descended. The rapid-death years of AIDS left the gay community ravaged and exhausted. Some claim the worst seems past, others predict another wave of devastation — new infections continue at an alarming rate. The relentless suffering of the 80s and 90s has given way to a calm that some consider apathy. Perhaps this is due to a degree of willful forgetfulness.

Former Denver resident, Peter Greene, who was christened Mr. Gay Colorado in 1976 and was on the cover of Out Front Colorado 35 years ago, makes a cameo appearance in the documentary with his longtime friend and caregiver Eileen Glutzer, says: “For younger viewers, who seem to be coming to this movie in droves at festivals — at least in San Francisco — I think they get the true horror and sadness of the images of people who are their peers. For older people [the documentary] is both difficult and cathartic. For both [groups] to be at the same movie is emotionally and spiritually transforming. That is what I felt.”

We Were Here utilizes testimonials of survivors, caregivers and observers from San Francisco’s experience with AIDS to open up an overdue conversation both about the history of the epidemic which is far from over.

We Were Here screens at the Denver FilmCenter December 2–8. Visit www.DenverFilm.org.