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Sex Positive

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Sex Positive (2009)

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Reviews Counted:16

Fresh:13

Rotten:3

Average Rating:7.1/10

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong sexual content including graphic dialogue and images, and for language

Runtime: 75 mins

Genre: Education/General Interest

Theatrical Release:Jun 12, 2009 Limited

Synopsis: Maybe it took somebody with no investment in the sexual-culture wars of the 1980s, like 24-year-old filmmaker Daryl Wein, to rediscover a lightning-rod figure like safe-sex pioneer Richard... Maybe it took somebody with no investment in the sexual-culture wars of the 1980s, like 24-year-old filmmaker Daryl Wein, to rediscover a lightning-rod figure like safe-sex pioneer Richard Berkowitz and present him without prejudice. A one-time S/M hustler, Berkowitz and his friend Michael Callen, supported by controversial AIDS researcher Joseph Sonnabend, began urging gay men to avoid unprotected anal sex as early as 1982 -- and were treated as pariahs by the mainstream gay community. Berkowitz is a fascinating, prickly, decidedly unsaintly character, and Wein's film provides a fascinating and crucial slice of traumatic sexual history that's all but invisible to younger generations. --© Regent Releasing [More]

Starring: Richard Berkowitz

Starring: Richard Berkowitz

Director: Daryl Wein

Director: Daryl Wein
Producer: David Oliver Cohen, Daryl Wein
Composer: Michael Tremante
Studio: Regent Releasing

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Reviews for Sex Positive

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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.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
07/03/09
David Wiegand
David Wiegand
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A thoroughly fascinating, illuminating and vital documentary for everyone young and old.

Full Review Source: NYC Movie Guru | comment Comment
06/28/09
Avi Offer
Avi Offer
NYC Movie Guru

Daryl Wein calls attention both to unjustly neglected pioneering AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz and his still widely ignored groundbreaking promotion of safe sex.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | comment Comment
06/19/09
Kevin Thomas
Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Wein clearly cares for his subject. Yet he leaves room for our admiration and our ambivalence. This is an achievement of heart and of mind.

Full Review Source: Denver Post | comment Comment
06/19/09
Lisa Kennedy
Lisa Kennedy
Denver Post
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Scruffy but arresting documentary about an ever-embattled, pioneering fighter in the gay AIDS wars.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
06/17/09
David Noh
David Noh
Film Journal International

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.

Full Review Source: New York Post | comment Comment
06/12/09
Kyle Smith
Kyle Smith
New York Post
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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.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
06/12/09
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden
New York Times
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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.

Full Review Source: New York Daily News | comment Comment
06/11/09
Elizabeth Weitzman
Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News
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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.

Full Review Source: Time Out New York | comment Comment
06/10/09
Keith Uhlich
Keith Uhlich
Time Out New York

It helps that Wein's subject is such a fascinating, garrulous paradox.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
06/10/09
Melissa Anderson
Melissa Anderson
Village Voice
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

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.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
06/09/09
Bill Weber
Bill Weber
Slant Magazine

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

Full Review Source: SpoutBlog | comment Comment
06/09/09
Karina Longworth
Karina Longworth
SpoutBlog

Filmmaker Daryl Wein throws us into the epicentre of this period, when three men matter-of-factly said the unthinkable

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
04/24/09
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Definitely worth seeing...many of us literally owe our lives to (the film's subjects).

Full Review Source: Orange County and Long Beach Blade | comment Comment
02/27/09
Fr. Chris Carpenter
Fr. Chris Carpenter
Orange County and Long Beach Blade

A well-documented look back at this history and these people that most audiences will see when it once it reaches PBS...which it will.

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
02/17/09
Tim Cogshell
Tim Cogshell
Boxoffice Magazine

Daryl Wein's engrossing portrait of Richard Berkowitz is freshly engaging largely due to the subject himself.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
07/08/08
Dennis Harvey
Dennis Harvey
Variety
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