Watching the 80s through the lenses of its superstars is its own glossy and compelling reward, but Freedom also depicts the carnage of the decade.
Tag: AIDS
Posted inArts & Culture
Hidden no more
One of my favorite passages in Chicago journalist Michael J. O’Loughlin’s new book, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, opens like an old-school joke. A nun named Sister Carol Baltosiewich is sitting in a New York City gay bar and eyeing the men around her, when […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Pritzker has repealed the state’s HIV criminalization law
The 32-year-old statute was enacted during the height of homophobic panic about HIV and AIDS.
Posted inNews & Politics
Queer to the Left came to raise hell
The group rejected the mainstream gay rights movement and kept alive the spirit of radical LGBTQ+ activism.
Posted inMusic
Thirty years ago, a Black queer zine captured the scene that birthed house
Robert Ford and Trent Adkins shaped the bold, subversive, gossipy, funny, deeply engaged voice of Thing, which was felled by the AIDS pandemic in 1993.
Posted inNews & Politics
When crime goes viral
Activists say Illinois’s law that makes it illegal to expose others to HIV is racist and homophobic. Now they’re close to changing it.
Posted inArts & Culture
Urban Theater Company re-creates the house music scene from Back in the Day
But the dance sequences undermine the attempts to address serious issues.
Posted inArts & Culture
After AIDS, love endures—and so does Falsettos
The glorious Broadway revival makes a quick stop in Chicago.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Last Session’s backstory makes it more than a relic of the AIDS crisis
Playwright Steve Schalchlin’s survival turns the musical into something hopeful and defiant.
Posted inBlogs
Gone too soon: five films by directors who died young
These final films by five directors who died too young give a taste of what was left unrealized.
Posted inArts & Culture
The inconsequential first half of Holding the Man is as hard to swallow as its devastating conclusion
Tommy Murphy’s adaptation of Australian author Timothy Conigrave’s coming-of-age memoir fails to question the sociopolitical forces that led to the AIDS crisis.
Posted inArts & Culture
Hurricane Damage dives into the wreck of the AIDS crisis
Even with a hunky handyman, there’s no escape.
Posted inBlogs
Queer filmmaker Derek Jarman gets a Pride Month retrospective at FilmStruck
FilmStruck celebrates Pride Month with a retrospective on queer British filmmaker Derek Jarman.
Posted inArts & Culture
Pink Orchids and The Green Bay Tree look back at the bad old days of 20th-century queer life
The AIDS crisis! The evil gay villain!
Posted inArts & Culture
The 1980s AIDS epidemic in Chicago revisited in Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, The Great Believers
“I would love for people who lived through this to feel some recognition, to feel some catharsis.”