We Were Here

WE WERE HERE documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It 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. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support.

Early in the epidemic, San Francisco’s compassionate, multifaceted, and creative response to AIDS became known as “The San Francisco Model”. The city’s activist and progressive infrastructure that evolved out of the 1960’s, combined with San Francisco’s highly politicized gay community centered around the Castro Street neighborhood, helped overcome the obstacles of a nation both homophobic and lacking in universal healthcare. In its suffering, San Francisco mirrors the experience of so many American cities during those years. In its response, The San Francisco Model remains a standard to aspire to in seeking a healthier, more just, more humane society.

2011 will mark 30 years since AIDS descended. The epidemic roiled San Francisco for two decades and only began granting some reprieve with medical advancements in the late 90s. AIDS ravaged the City and communities all over the country yet, as in most of the developed world, the worst seems to have past. Though roughly a million people are still living with HIV in the United States, the relentless suffering of the 80s and 90s, when 50% of the gay population was infected, has given way to a kind of calm, and, understandably, a degree of willful forgetfulness. WE WERE HERE utilizes San Francisco’s experience with AIDS to open up an overdue conversation both about the history of the epidemic, and the lessons to be learned from it.

WE WERE HERE focuses on 5 individuals – all of who lived in San Francisco prior to the epidemic. Their lives changed in unimaginable ways when their beloved city morphed from a hotbed of sexual freedom and social experimentation into the epicenter of a terrible sexually transmitted plague. From their different vantage points as caregivers, activists, researchers, as friends and lovers of the afflicted, and as people with AIDS themselves, the interviewees share stories which are not only intensely personal, but which also illuminate the much larger themes of that era: the political and sexual complexities, the terrible emotional toll, the role of women – particularly lesbians – in caring for and fighting for their gay brothers.

“It’s impossible for a single film to capture the devastation wrought by AIDS, or the heroism with which many in the LGBT community responded to it. But director David Weissman’s documentary is such a powerful achievement because he just about does it.” (Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly)

The Academy has short-listed the film to be a nominee for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.