Michael Balser

Voices of Positive Women is a ground-breaking documentary examination of the impact of HIV and AIDS on the lives of women working from material published in the book "Positive Women", a collection of personal accounts of women from all over the world living with AIDS and HIV. Bravely sharing their experiences publicly in what until now has been a void of information and support, and in some cases medical and bureaucratic denial that women are even at risk, the nine women presented in Voices of Positive Women speak compellingly on their own terms of their personal struggles for survival and voice.

Richard Locke was the star of the Gage Trilogy, ground-breaking feature length gay porn films made in the late seventies. This tape is a document of an erotic performance intercut with statistics of HIV transmission in North America.

Positive Men begins as a docudrama which illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on gay men in the early 1980s. Memories of New York and San Francisco are the backdrop for seven dramatic scenes which designate the intersection of community support, medical science, and gay politics that emerged in response to the AIDS epidemic. Words and images from these scenes resonate throughout the documentary portraits which follow. The interviews, conducted in Toronto and San Francisco (1993-1994), feature artists, filmmakers, AIDS community workers, writers and volunteers who have made unique contributions within the cultural and community responses to AIDS.

AIDS activists discuss the merits and harms of AZT, one of the first drugs approved to treat HIV.

A collaboration between a video artist and an artist who works primarily in painting and drawing. This collaboration has produced a mix of narratives which receates the delirium of the AIDS epidemic. The Cree myth of a cannibalistic demon (Windigo) becomes a macabre metaphor for the virus and its psychological affects.