Letters from Home

‘A friend of mine has a half-fare transit card which she uses on buses and subways. The other day when she showed her card, the driver asked what her disability was. She said: ‘I have AIDS’. And the driver said: ‘No you don‘t. If you had AIDS you‘d be home - dying.’ ’’ This anecdote at the beginning of Mike Hoolboom’s documentary essay letters from home on the one hand illustrates the prejudices people have towards HIV-positive people (‘If you have AIDS, you will die’), and on the other hand it demonstrates that you will not die as soon as you have been diagnosed with AIDS. For his film, Hoolboom drew on his personal experiences and those of his friends. He based the film on a speech by Vito Russo during an ACT NOW week in 1988. Hoolboom (Toronto, 1959) is the director of more than forty short and sometimes experimental films. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)