[LINK] "Last Men Standing": On long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS in San Francisco
Towleroad shared the trailer for Last Man Standing, an hour-long documentary looking at the lives of eight long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS in San Francisco.
Last Men Standing Trailer from San Francisco Chronicle on Vimeo.
Erin Allday's San Francisco Chronicle feature goes into written detail, with photos, about these men.
Since 1981, when the first man succumbed to a disease that did not yet have a name, AIDS has taken more than 20,000 lives in San Francisco, most of them gay men, most of them decades too soon.
Students and lawyers, musicians and doctors, drugstore clerks and teachers: They were young men exploring sex and drugs, falling in love for the first time, building a political movement. They were still growing up.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
When San Francisco General Hospital opened the nation’s first inpatient AIDS ward, nurses started a scrapbook for photos of patients and staff and thank-you cards from families. They also started a list. On the first page, in 1983, one nurse at Ward 5B wrote: “I don’t want the names of the folks who have died on this ward to be forgotten.” Just 28 carefully handwritten names appear on that page. A few pages later, the list for 1985 contains nearly 200 names, each so tightly scrawled, some are hard to read. The scrapbook is now held at the San Francisco General Hospital AIDS Ward 5B/5A Archives at the Public Library Video by Erin Brethauer
AIDS gutted their generation. But not everyone died. Many men had the remarkable luck - and often brutal misfortune - to struggle on. Now some have fought AIDS for half their lives, and by the most primitive measure, they’ve won.
In San Francisco and across the country, AIDS has become an older person’s disease: More than half of those living with AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes it, are now 50 or older. In San Francisco alone, 6,000 gay men have been living with HIV or AIDS for at least 20 years. Some have been able to thrive. But most have not.
In the darkest years of the epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, AIDS was almost always fatal; the prognosis was a few years, maybe a few months. These men, then in their 20s and 30s, weren’t supposed to make it to 40. Now some are 60 years old, even 70, still alive but wounded physically, psychologically and economically.
For many, time stopped when they were diagnosed. They let go of futures they had no reason to believe would ever arrive. So they have no savings, no retirement money, no strategy for continuing to live in a city that’s increasingly unaffordable. Over the next decade or so, many will need financial aid when private disability benefits run out.
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Last Men Standing Trailer from San Francisco Chronicle on Vimeo.
Erin Allday's San Francisco Chronicle feature goes into written detail, with photos, about these men.
Since 1981, when the first man succumbed to a disease that did not yet have a name, AIDS has taken more than 20,000 lives in San Francisco, most of them gay men, most of them decades too soon.
Students and lawyers, musicians and doctors, drugstore clerks and teachers: They were young men exploring sex and drugs, falling in love for the first time, building a political movement. They were still growing up.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
When San Francisco General Hospital opened the nation’s first inpatient AIDS ward, nurses started a scrapbook for photos of patients and staff and thank-you cards from families. They also started a list. On the first page, in 1983, one nurse at Ward 5B wrote: “I don’t want the names of the folks who have died on this ward to be forgotten.” Just 28 carefully handwritten names appear on that page. A few pages later, the list for 1985 contains nearly 200 names, each so tightly scrawled, some are hard to read. The scrapbook is now held at the San Francisco General Hospital AIDS Ward 5B/5A Archives at the Public Library Video by Erin Brethauer
AIDS gutted their generation. But not everyone died. Many men had the remarkable luck - and often brutal misfortune - to struggle on. Now some have fought AIDS for half their lives, and by the most primitive measure, they’ve won.
In San Francisco and across the country, AIDS has become an older person’s disease: More than half of those living with AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes it, are now 50 or older. In San Francisco alone, 6,000 gay men have been living with HIV or AIDS for at least 20 years. Some have been able to thrive. But most have not.
In the darkest years of the epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, AIDS was almost always fatal; the prognosis was a few years, maybe a few months. These men, then in their 20s and 30s, weren’t supposed to make it to 40. Now some are 60 years old, even 70, still alive but wounded physically, psychologically and economically.
For many, time stopped when they were diagnosed. They let go of futures they had no reason to believe would ever arrive. So they have no savings, no retirement money, no strategy for continuing to live in a city that’s increasingly unaffordable. Over the next decade or so, many will need financial aid when private disability benefits run out.