Program Two - "Identity"

"One of the hardest things to deal with when I first found out that I was HIV positive was the overwhelming sense that I had done something wrong." - Christopher D.L. Miller, Atlanta

"The before-HIV Eleanor used to be a very quiet, abused housewife. The after- HIV Eleanor is a very tough, no-nonsense person." - Eleanor Mirchel

One in three Americans knows someone with HIV. "Identity," the second program in the POSITIVE: LIFE WITH HIV series, looks at how those living with the disease must often reevaluate their priorities as they confront the stigma and tackle important personal issues such as relationships, self-discovery, and change.

Chorus: (in order of appearance)

Eleanor Mitchell, Jerry Rosanbalm, Christopher Miller, Brian Perry, Elena Schwolsky-Fitch, Shanti Santana, Julie Pecaroni, Francis Blacklock, Beverly Rotter, Marina Alvarez, Brenda Salters, Greg Payton, Jon Read, Alice Terson, Gregg Bordowitz, Chase Mullins, Devi Grazier, Peter Canavan, Luis Lopez Detres

Smashing Plates
Producer: John Traynor
Director: Chuck London

Canadian filmmaker John Greyson teamed with musical comedy writer Glenn Schellenberg (who scored Greyson's Zero Patience) for this rousing musical parody on stigma. Performed by New York City's AIDS Theater Project, the segment is a tongue-in-cheek parody where waiters break plates amidst the irrational fears of their customers. The AIDS Theatre Project is comprised of artists, performers, and people infected with and affected by HIV.

Tonya Hall
Producer/Director: Lucy Winer
Co-producer: Catherine Saalfield

In 1983 at age 19, Tonya Hall contracted HIV from her boyfriend at a time when women were not thought to be susceptible. She recalls, "They were still calling it 'gay cancer.' I was the only woman I knew with HIV, so I felt like a leper." A long-term survivor, activist, and lesbian, Tonya's common sense and humor serve her well as she faces the possibility of blindness.

Snowfire
Writer/Producer/Director: Ayoka Chenzira

In Snowfire, the series' only dramatized story, award-winning filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira blends experimental narrative and photo animation to tell a story about a West Indian man unable to accept his gay son's life until faced with his death.

Mike and Debbie Klein
Producer/Director: Dan Jones

The story of an American dream turned upside down. Mike and Debbie live in Del City, Oklahoma, where Mike had expected to be the family's breadwinner, until his diagnosis with HIV. "I'm going to be bringing in bills now...medical bills," Mike says. "There won't be any paychecks." Debbie, who is negative and once aspired to be "just like Donna Reed," and Mike have now learned to cope with change. Despite being rejected from three churches and giving up their dreams of having children, their relationship grows steadily closer.

Sexuality
Producer/Director: Catherine Saalfield, Calogero Salvo

A variety of voices and opinions on the complicated issues of dating, relationships, and safer sex from the vantage point of HIV positive people. Among them is Debbie Thomas, who takes her son's advice to "get a life" and forms a dating service for positive people.

Bertha Iron Boy
Producer/Director: Mona Smith

From her homeland on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota and on the streets of Minneapolis, we are introduced to Bertha lron Boy. Diagnosed with HIV in 1989, she did not come to grips with her positive HIV status until discovering she was pregnant. "I believe that dreams are messages," says Bertha. "What I [dreamt] was that there was going to be this little girl that came into my life and I was going to learn a lesson from it." [Note: Bertha Iron Boy died in 1996.]

Picture It
Writer: Luna Lewis Ortiz
Producer/Director: Lucy Winer
Animator: Shawn Atkins
Co-producer: Catherine Saalfield

Diagnosed at age 14, just months after the abrupt end of his first relationship, Luna is diagnosed as HIV positive and "outed" by his family's physician. Now 20, he looks back and comments, Holden Caufield-style, on coming of age in the age of HIV. "I became my parents parent and taught them what I knew."

Also featured:

Queer and Loathing with David Feinberg
Animator: Dean Kendrick

Scattered throughout the POSITIVE series are animated excerpts from Queer and Loathing (Viking Penguin), David Feinberg's humorously cynical lamentations on living with HIV. Community's excerpts look at disclosure. Feinberg provides the narration on these segments, completed before the author's death from AIDS.

Tips from Tab Lloyd
Writer/Producer: Richard Cardran, a.k.a. Tab Lloyd

Throughout the series, "Tab Lloyd" offers advice ranging from the practical to the hysterical. Community's tips center on "social worker protocol."

David Rousseve and Reality
Producer/Director: Ayoka Chenzira

Throughout the series, choreographer/dancer David Rousseve and members of his company. Reality. provide moving testimony to the strengths and needs of living with the epidemic.