Documentary filmmaker Daryl Wein explores the life and legacy of revolutionary gay S & M hustler-turned-AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz, whose noble efforts in promoting safe sex during the 1980s have been all but forgotten in the early years of the new millennium. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Wein tackles an incredibly complex array of issues surrounding HIV, focusing largely on Berkowitz, once a nice young Jewish kid at Rutgers who found a lucrative career as an S&M hustler before becoming an activist and co-author.
Daryl Wein calls attention both to unjustly neglected pioneering AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz and his still widely ignored groundbreaking promotion of safe sex.
For gays who remember the nightmare, Sex Positive may be too depressing to watch. But the movie strikes a cautionary tone for a younger generation that, it says, isn't taking the HIV threat seriously.
The movie jolts you with the realization that the AIDS epidemic and the public debate about such issues have retreated so far under the news radar as to be half-forgotten.
Though he made an impact on thousands of lives -- or so, this intermittently compelling biography suggests -- AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz remains unknown and uncelebrated, alone and barely scraping by.
The film is founded on shaky, near-exploitative ground, something mirrored in the agitated handheld camerawork by Alex Bergman and in Berkowitz's offhand comment about the good this film could do in encouraging safe sex.
Sex Positive uses the dual activist/sexual outlaw persona of "safer sex" pioneer Richard Berkowitz as a prism through which to view the life-and-death struggles of an era.
Sex Positive too often looks like something hastily thrown together, which belies the built trust evident between the filmmaker and his subject. Over the course of the film, Berkowitz moves from refusing to discuss certain specifics to spilling in great d
This woefully short doc, in essence, tells the story of the invention of safe sex and the split within the gay community over how HIV is transmitted. On that ground alone, Sex Positive is required viewing. The information presented and people profiled are as integral to American history as Washington, Lincoln,
Franklin and King. Why? Because before they took a stand for what they believed, no one had heard of safe sex. Now that term is nearly ubiquitous throughout the world. The entire story of AIDS, from the first cases to the governments non-action to the activists to now, deserves more than 75 minutes to connect the people involved and document this important part of history. Good start, even with the somewhat lacking camera work and terrible jump cuts within interviews.
Excelente documental sobre Richard Berkowitz, un "S&M Hustler" que se convirtio en activista gay y llego a ser uno de los primeros inventores y defensores del "Sexo Seguro" entre la comunidad gay de Manhattan.
Gran material con excelentes entrevistas e invaluables lecciones acerca de la epidemia y de la forma en que
las distintas comunidades reaccionan.
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