AIDS Video Activism: Women and Incarceration
Date: Monday, April 8, 6–8pm
Location: New York City’s LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011
This event is a free and public event, but RSVPs are required. RSVP by clicking here.
Spanning several generations within the AIDS activist and related video movements, this series focuses upon the stories, activism and struggles of women, particularly Black women and women of color, who organized and became activists around injustices facing incarcerated women. At the heart of these videos is a deeply feminist commitment to freedom and a linked understanding that those on the inside are part of life on the outside, even if structural and penal forces work to deny them these connections. Questions of faith, race, gender, sexuality, what-could-be and the weight of systemic violence on all people permeate the work.
These videos honor the past and present of organizing work—its legacies, leaders and lessons—and offer insights into how activism of the not-so-distant past continues to inform contemporary movement work around incarceration. The following films will be featured:
I’m You, You’re Me: Women Surviving Prison, Living with AIDS
(Catherine Saalfield-Gund and Debra Levine, 1992): 28 mins
Blind Eye to Justice Directed and Edited by Carol Leigh
Produced by Cynthia Chandler (Women’s Positive Legal Action Network/ Justice NOW), 1998: 35 mins
Digital Stories
(From the Center/ Margaret Rhee, Isela Ford, and Allyse Gray, 2011): 15 mins
After the film screening, a conversation with the filmmakers will be moderated by Margaret Rhee.
Special Guest: Judy Greenspan
Programmed by Katherine Cheairs and Alexandra Juhasz, AIDS Video Activism: Women and Incarceration is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism, on view at New York City’s LGBT Community Center March 10 – April 29. To learn more about this exhibition, please click here.
