Last Men Standing is a 65-minute film produced by the San Francisco Chronicle which is screening on April 8 at the Castro Theatre in SF. It follows 8 survivors of AIDS in the life they never thought they would get.
Writes the San Francisco Chronicle in a devastating feature:
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.
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.
Accompanying the feature are profiles of survivors and those they have lost.
Recommended reading and watching, for everyone.
