With this homage to Hank Wilson, a true pioneer when it comes to LGBTQ rights, and a passionate AIDS activist and survivor, Ostertag brilliantly pinpoints the struggles gay people endured when the very meaning of gay rights was still in its infancy. During this time, a growing number of people were passing of a highly contagious yet still very misunderstood illness: AIDS.
Aside from supporting Harvey Milk during the consolidation of gay rights in late 1970s San Francisco, Hank was present at one of the first meetings entailing the fight against demonization of HIV and AIDS carriers while the epidemic was disastrously paving its way.
Ostertag’s work is borderline comparable to a religious experience, which sees the figure of Hank Wilson being portrayed as a saint, in both metaphorical and literal sense. The director takes the extra step and addresses not only the painfully unfair treatment that gay people had to put up with on a regular basis but also the internalized social, racial, and class divisions existing within the gay community itself, which have been left unspoken for far too long. The documentary makes its mission to show how Hank Wilson has been a key individual when it comes to addressing—and potentially solving—important issues such as homelessness, which frequently had to do with kids being disowned for their sexuality and/or their HIV status.
The collage/patchwork-ish style and the reliance upon UCLA film archives showing a lot of precious footage from the late 1970s (a very fervid and mutable era for gay rights) triggers an emotional journey back to a time in history that witnessed gay individuals fearing to walk Castro's streets at night, Anita Briant’s ferocious fight against homosexuals, and a numerous amount of teachers nearly losing their jobs as a direct consequence of her monstrous agenda.
In the early 1980s, the acronym AIDS was a taboo, a stigmatized definition that, due to its very misconstrued nature of the time, fostered homophobic behaviors and social divisions. By relying upon interviews with such public figures as Lea Delaria, and telling a graphic tale of unfounded medical rumours and a rampant disdain towards homosexuals based solely on fear, the director leads the viewers through a chronologically detailed introduction to Hank Wilson’s infinite compassion and tireless fight against inequality and discrimination in an era when people with HIV/AIDS were treated as second class citizens and often prohibited to even rent a room in a hotel.
Ostertag’s presentation of the revolts against society’s intolerance to same-sex couples is an absolute must watch for anyone belonging to the LGBTQ community, especially the youngest members who were lucky enough to walk a path of acceptance previously laid out by their elders.