Two Marches

“In [Jim Hubbard's] latest work, scenes shot at two national gay marches on Washington, DC are juxtaposed to reveal some of the devastating changes in the gay movement from 1979 to 1987, as hope is replaced by frustration and mourning. In Hubbard's roving footage we follow the shifts in spirit, age and racial composition of the demonstrators and witness the growing organization of the protest spectacle, as ragtag bunches of rebellious marchers give way to marching bands and the unfurling of the Names Project AIDS Quilt. ... Yet his touch is always gentle, and deeply, if elusively, personal, from the opening shots of Hubbard embracing the late filmmaker Roger Jacoby to the beautifully choreographed hands of deaf people signing. Always working within a small scale and tightly focused format, Hubbard has developed an astonishingly varied and emotionally complex body of work over the years, a series of personal film essays of intertwined loss and liberation.” — Liz Kotz, Afterimage