Silence = Death.  “Health care is a right!  Act up!  Fight back!  Fight AIDS!”  You may have seen them demonstrating on the streets, but How To Survive A Plague is an honest, no-holds-barred peek into the world of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Advisory Group), and their fight to find help for those with HIV and AIDS at a time when nobody seemed to care, or were too frightened of the disease to do anything.  This movie jumps right out of the gate, coming at you hard and fast with information and personal revelations that you can’t turn away from.  A mix of history class and raw energy, How To Survive A Plague is a look back at how people with no medical training, no experience with the workings of the government, and very little public support were able to change HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable illness.

Plague starts with archival footage, breaking the years down in chapter format, from 1987-1995.  This 1987 is very different from the one in Rock of Ages;  it’s year 6 of the AIDS epidemic in Greenwich Village.  “Even hospitals turn away the dying” — and if that doesn’t break your heart you’re made of stone. It feels like war footage, and that’s no coincidence: the fight for survival against HIV/AIDS was and is the war at home.  Plague has a down-n-dirty home movies feel that gives the film an intimacy that wouldn’t have been achieved with a brightly polished look.  The filmmakers let the archival footage they use speak for itself. It’s eloquence is heartbreaking and arresting.

Not only is How To Survive A Plague a history lesson, it’s a lesson on how the drugs used to combat HIV/AIDS work.  Speakers include Dr Fauci of the NIH and Susan Ellenberg of U Penn (though she was with the NIH in the footage used in this film).   There’s also an intelligent, easy-to-understand description of Protease inhibitors, along with the pros and cons of these drugs.  What sets How To Survive A Plague apart from many other documentaries about the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the filmmakers unflinching look at all sides of the story.  Do they have an agenda?  Of course: people shouldn’t have to die from HIV/AIDS.  But that agenda doesn’t get in the way of showing viewers exactly what went on in ACT UP’s fight to be heard.  When members of ACT UP felt some of their members got too cozy with politicos and businesses, this film doesn’t cover that  up or try to make excuses.  The directors show us everything, warts and all.

Plague also looks at why the need for affordable medicines was so dire; at the start of the well-known drug treatment AZT (azidothymidine/zidovudine), the costs were ten thousand dollars a year per individual.  Not to mention the difficult fight to get these drugs approved, and the fear those infected with HIV held in their hearts when government bureaucracy threatened to slow things down.  No wonder people were administering medicines to themselves because those medicines weren’t yet approved.  Talk about being on the front line of R&D.  Or life and death; in this instance it’s the same difference.

Mind-blowing movie moment?  Seeing conservative homophobe Pat Buchanan agree with a member of ACT UP.  It’s regarding access to drugs, but still.  Ba-boom!

Where-Are-They-Now prologues at the end credits update viewers on some of the people from the documentary.  Always a good thing, but especially meaningful here.  It warms the heart to see those who survived…even though the ones who didn’t aren’t far from everyone’s mind.

Get out to the multiplex.  Go see How To Survive A Plague.  And when something in the world seems wrong to you…ACT UP.