Help me finish my LGBTQ+ historic Series
I am about 90% complete
I’ve had a great start on achieving my target of $50,000
I'm crowd-funding - please help.
Four years ago I nurtured an obsession to capture stories from people in the Midwest and South who were active during the AIDS crisis. I'd been digitizing archival footage I'd shot back then. I went back to three places I had lived during those dark times.
I could myself attest to the deaths of hundreds, so revisiting the trauma was often difficult - who lived? Who died? I'd cry either way.
I care deeply about this work.
This is my story too, and I have to get it finished.
I have no social life, I’ve alienated my friends
and am driving my spouse insane.
The stories I collected bring to life a narrative of the modern gay rights movement. Fueled by Stonewall (1969) and ignited by Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children Campaign (1978), the LGBTQ+ population became a credible political force by the early 1990s.
The cultural, religious and political climate - like now - was oppressive and violent. Only the LGBTQ+ community and allies took serious note of the HIV virus that reached every state by 1985. By 2000, AIDS had killed more than 448,000 - 46% were gay men, and a generation was gone.
My vision is to get this seven-part series on cable.
I desperately need funding to finish.
Please help me to share these stories with a nation that
continues to ignore or erase what happened.
Your contribution will pay for work with a senior editor to clean it up and format for television
and to pay for archival TV news footage and other licensing fees.
(created from my archives)
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for helping me get this done.
Help me crowd fund and get this finished
REVIEW
“Beautiful. You tell the story as one of us who lived and loved through it all. You had the emotional courage to take us back to the horror that it was with the heroes and heroines of then and now.
The thread of love and courage in the face of discrimination, disease and death serves as a tribute to our community for its strength during those dark times. It offers us hope as we confront dark days that threaten us now. Bravo.”
~ Ron Joullian, New Orleans, November 2024
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1st Valda Lewis $250 raised 1 donation
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