Program Four - "Fighting for Our Lives"

"I woke up one day and said the whole world has got to see a face on AIDS and I'm the one to do it. I decided to organize the country. Getting all the mothers in the country who have lost, or who have, a child with AIDS to march on Washington. We've had enough. We've lost a generation. I'm not willing to lose another." - Beverly Rotter, a self-described "little grandmother from Brooklyn" and founder of Mothers Against AIDS.

"Over the last year, I pretty well told everyone how much I appreciate them and I've taken care of all the loose ends. I know what's going to happen to me when I die. I'm going to be cremated immediately and everyone I love knows that" - Woody Leatherwood

One in three Americans knows someone with HIV. "Fighting for Our Lives," the fourth and final program in the POSITIVE: LIFE WITH HIV series, looks at many fronts on which people are fighting the war against AIDS, and the many ways people living with HIV are making peace with their present and preparing for the future.

Chorus: (in order of appearance)

Beverly Rotter, Greg Payton, Jerry Rosanbalm, Devi Glazier, Eleanor Mitchell, John Manzon, Brenda Salters, Daniel Wolfe, Christopher Miller, Julie Pecaroni, Elena Schwolsky-Fitch, Marina Alvarez, Richard Elovich, Frank Matthews, Marie St. Cyr, Jon Read, Suki Terada Ports, Peter Canavan, LeBaron C. Moseby.

In The Beginning
Producer/Director: Calogero Salvo

Performance artist Penny Arcade returns in an essay woven throughout the program, based on her own involvement and frustration in the course of her fourteen years of AIDS activism. "When there was nobody to wash the patients, we washed them," she says. "When there was nobody to make up the beds, we made them. We shaved them, we fed them, and when there was nothing left to do, we learned to help our friends die."

Project Transitions
Producer/Director: Jana Birchum

Residents and care providers at Project Transitions hospice in Texas share their thoughts on the final days of a person's life, grief, and dying with dignity.

Never Forget
Producer/Director: Catherine Saalfield

Julie Tolentino reflects on how, though just in her twenties, she has lost so many friends to AIDS. As she dances on a city rooftop, Julie wonders at how she can share these experiences with her grandmother who, as a consequence of age, understands the pain that comes with each passing. "I live as if I was HIV positive, meaning that I can't stop living like this is the last chance I get."

Melvin and John
Producers/Directors: Gary Robinson and Joanelle Nadine Romero

"It's the Navajo tradition that you don't talk about disease because, if you talk about it, you're wishing it on the Navajo people," says Melvin. Melvin, an HIV negative recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and John, who is HIV positive, live on the vast, yet isolated, Navajo reservation in northwest Arizona. Together, the two work against the odds to educate their people about the virus.

Breaths
Producer/Director: Julie Dash

Julie Dash, maker of the award-winning film "Daughters of the Dust," produces and directs "Breaths" featuring the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in a special musical tribute to the many people who have died from AIDS.

Cora Zabala
Producer/Director: Calogero Salvo

Cora Zabala is a grandmother with AIDS, who writes and produces "video letters" to her grandchildren and to the viewers of her television news segments in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Reaching thousands of viewers, Cora shares her insights, experience, and advice, leaving her legacy as she wants it remembered and urging others to fight for better health care. "Remember that during her worst times your grandma fought," Cora says in her video. "No matter how bad or how sad the moment is, you must keep fighting. Because tomorrow will be better." [Note: Cora Zabala died in February 1995.]

Activism
Producer/Director: Tami Gold and Gregg Bordowitz

A compelling look at those on the front line - from the head of the nation's largest AIDS service organization (the Gay Men's Health Crisis) to men and women working in the smallest of grass-roots organizations. (Scattered throughout.)

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.