When AIDS Was Funny

The short documentary When AIDS was Funny returns the audience to Ronald Reagan's era and its negative conservative attitude towards gay subcultures which were blamed for spreading the modern day plague, later named AIDS. Scott Calonico uses contemporary materials to show the introduction of the topic of HIV and AIDS into public awareness and the American political scene. There was no specific information at first concerning acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Its later association with gay and bisexual men often led to the problem being ridiculed, its importance belittled and the existence of the problem itself ignored altogether. Calonico allows the participants in these events to speak for themselves and their times through archived sound recordings and photographs. He brings to the foreground the relentless journalist Lester Kinsolving who, despite his own political views and prejudices, sought to generate public debate on the topic of AIDS. (Academia Film Olomouc)