Rending, harrowing, moving. This documentary by David Weissman and Bill Weber uses recent interviews and vintage photos and clips to fathom the AIDS epidemic, which nearly cratered the San Francisco gay community in the ’80s. There are five main survivor-witnesses, including an artist whose aged face is the spiritual map of an agonized era and a wonderful nurse who helped the distraught and dying. The result is never statistical. A medical crisis becomes human history, the history feels intimate, and the film is more about life than death. (2011) — David Elliott
This movie is not currently in theaters.