Film News
DVD Release of Critically Acclaimed AIDs Activist Documentaries ‘Fire In The Blood’ And ‘How To Survive A Plague’
Network Releasing is proud to announce that two award-winning and critically acclaimed documentaries looking at HIV and AIDS activism are soon to be released on DVD in March 2014. Fire In The Blood (dir. Dylan Mohan Gray) will be released on DVD on 24th March and How To Survive A Plague (dir. David France) on 31st March ahead of the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which runs 20-30 March 2014.
Fire In The Blood (released 24th March) is a critically-acclaimed documentary of medicine, monopoly and malice that tells the story of how Western pharmaceutical companies and governments aggressively blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the countries of Africa and the global south in the years after 1996. The film investigates how this caused over ten million unnecessary deaths and the improbable group of people who decided to fight back.
Fire In The Blood was shot on four continents and tells its remarkable story through the eyes of AIDS patients, front-line clinicians, radical health professionals, pharmaceutical company executives and global figures including Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Joseph Stiglitz. It is the never-before-told true story of the remarkable coalition which came together to stop ‘the Crime of the Century’ and save millions of lives in the process.
The film screened at Sundance Film Festival (2013 Grand Jury Prize nominee – World Cinema Documentary) and its message is clear: despite dramatic past victories, the fight for access to life-saving medicine is almost certainly just beginning.
Winner of the 2013 DOXA Feature Documentary Award, 2013 Justice Matters Award at the 27th Washington DC International Film Festival, the inaugural Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Prize for Political Film, and Best Debut Film of a Director at the Mumbai International Film Festival, Fire In The Blood has gained critical and audience praise across the globe.
How To Survive A Plague (released 31st March) is the Oscar-nominated story (2013 Academy Award nominee – Best Documentary) of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – and how their activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition.
Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and 1990s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.
Blisteringly powerful, How To Survive A Plague transports us back to a vital time of unbridled death, political indifference, and staggering resilience and constructs a commanding archetype for activism today.
More information on FIRE IN THE BLOOD can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/fireintheblood
More information on HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/Surviveaplagueuk
https://twitter.com/SurvivePlagueUK
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