“Nothing in this work is taken for granted, and Bordowitz’s bracing anger and inventive playfulness are both life-enhancing.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum

As the city of Melbourne trumpets its pride in queer lives via the Midsumma Festival and adjacent LGBTQI+ events, the third installment of Documentary Meets will take on the theme of ‘PRIDE (meets EPIDEMIC)’, foregrounding a dialogue around distinctively low-rent modes of media production that can, and have, given agency to marginalised people grappling with the reclamation of their own voices and narratives.

Join us on the Thursday, April 15 at Composite Moving Image Bank for a one-off screening of Fast Trip, Long Drop: Gregg Bordowitz’s short, sharp, and starkly intimate video diary-cum-essay, in which the young activist and filmmaker wrestles with his HIV diagnosis, an apparent death sentence, at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York City. Bristling with wry humour and a finely-tuned sense of irony, Bordowitz mashes together to-camera reflections on being gay and Jewish with documentation of Act-Up meetings, archival news footage, and conversations with friends (including Yvonne Rainer), effectively deconstructing dominant media narratives around AIDS in the resultant 54-minute film.

Guided by a monthly topic relevant to the local calendar and community, each film has been chosen to muster awareness and incite conversation - on pride; sex work; kin; colonisation, et al. - with guest speakers on hand to offer a viewing framework.

Doors and drinks start from 7; introduction and screening from 7.30.
Tickets for the upcoming screening are available via the above link ($10 waged / $5 unwaged / no one turned away for lack of funds). Seating allocations will be on a ‘first come, first served’ basis and capacity is limited to 25.
The space is wheelchair accessible and the film will be captioned.

The programmers and facilitators would like to highlight that ‘Documentary Meets’ screenings take place on stolen and unceded Wurundjeri Land. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and operate.