That’s why we have already filmed and transcribed 120 in-depth, broadcast quality interviews with them, to create the largest filmed archive of HIV related testimony in the UK. That amounts to over 200 hours of first person testimony of the age, and we plan to collect many more stories from people affected by HIV and AIDS over time. By achieving all this we continue to advance our social history.
While one of our aims is to create a feature film and other productions from the interviews, we also want to preserve them in their entirety for future generations. That’s why we have teamed up with the London Metropolitan Archive, the largest County office in the UK, to preserve the materials in perpetuity. The first 100 from the collection of film interviews are now available for researchers, historians and the public. They are subtitled and fully searchable across the collection, representing a massive resource that will be available for the next 1000 years.
Find out how to arrange access to the archive here.
The stories of those involved are already in danger of being forgotten, yet the epidemic is the most significant event in modern day LGBTQ+ life and continues to affect this community today. It changed the way that people were cared for and died and we owe a great amount to the activists from that time. Put simply, the AIDS pandemic probably advanced gay rights more than anything else in history and many of the freedoms the LGBTQ+ community enjoy today are due to the changes the AIDS pandemic ignited.
The project charts not only a key and tragic part of LGBTQ+ history, but of our society’s shared history through activism and the many acts of compassion and love. The HIV crisis cut into every kind of life, and the aftershocks reverberate on to this day.
