We Found Love in a Hopeless Place

Screening Program

Kia LaBeija, Goodnight, Kia, 2017 (5 min)

In Goodnight, Kia, Kia LaBeija processes a reoccurring dream of the home she shared with her mother Kwan Bennett. Bennett died of an AIDS-related illness in October of 2004, resulting in an unanticipated move that reshaped the course of her teenage daughter's life.

Glen Fogel, 7 Years Later, 2014 (4 min)

Glen Fogel and his ex-boyfriend Nathan Lee discuss the events that led to their breakup while a robotic camera autonomously scans the apartment. The video is edited to look as though it is a seamless single take, a time warp in which Fogel and Lee appear in multiple places in the apartment at the same time.

Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends Mixtape (The Demo), 2017 (8 min)

DeShawn (an unlikely anti-hero) passes his days with spiraling epiphanies and lucid reckless Bohemianism fueled by systemic poverty and HIV ennui. In this video, he relates his philosophy of the world to an unknown caller on his landline while magically shrink-fitting a pair of recently shoplifted jeans.

Kurt Weston, Not Going Away, 2007 (6 min)

Kurt Weston sorts through, ingests, and injects various medications while his voiceover ruminates on his own seroconversion. In doing so, the piece sheds light on both the historic tribulations of living with HIV and AIDS as well as the current precarity that newly-diagnosed people may face.

Christopher Murray, Soneto Veitenueve, 2019 (4 min)

The video uses a new Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 by award-winning Colombian writer Jaime Manrique. The sonnet provides an alternative context for the visual narrative of a gay Colombian man trapped in a nest of despair and self-medicating with nicotine and online compulsivity.

Beto Pérez, In the Future, 2021 (7 min)

In the Future tells the stories of people living with HIV in Mexico who have been unable to access treatment because of government corruption and widespread theft and looting of medication.

Gevi Dimitrakopoulou, This is Right: Zak, Life and After, 2020 (9 min)

This is Right: Zak, Life and After is a portrait of Zak Kostopoulos, a well-known queer AIDS activist who was publicly lynched to death in Athens in 2018. Zak's chosen family and community highlight Zak's activist life and the response that his murder has galvanized.

VOCAL-NY, VOCAL-NY for ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, 2018 (8 min)

VOCAL-NY (Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders) is a New York-based grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people in order to create healthy and just communities. In this video, VOCAL explains how it uses political theater and direct action as creative tactics to address housing policies as part of their work to end the HIV and AIDS epidemic.