Speak for Yourself

My first foray into oral history. Also, my first attempt at video editing and image processing. In 1988, I received a grant from The Kitchen in the form of a Video-8 camera. I used it to start an oral history of ACT UP. I interviewed 7 ACT UPpers and amassed 10 hours of footage. The filmmaker in me thought that I would never be able to edit that much material, so I stupidly, and with a total lack of understanding of oral history, stopped filming. I had access to a Sony Video-8 editing machine for a short time so I tried to do interesting things with the images, eventually I just ran out of time and edited some of the footage together. The most important part is when Robert Garcia talks about his multiple identities -- Gay, Latino, Native American -- and what he's lost, starting at 40:02.

3:03 -- David France
11:11 -- Alan Klein & Karl Soehnlein
18:22 -- Robert Garcia
18:38 -- Maxine Wolfe
23:37 -- Maxine Wolfe & Sarah Schulman
38:59 -- Robert Garcia
45:17 -- Gregg Bordowitz