We Were Here

In the 1970s, San Francisco had arguably the largest and most active gay community in America; it was the first city in America to elect an openly gay man to public office, Harvey Milk, and was one of the first places where the gay community learned to consolidate their political and economic power as well as enjoying a freedom and openness unknown in most cities. But the idyll of the 1970s ended in the early '80s, as AIDS began its spread through the city's gay community, claiming some of the best and brightest voices of a generation and forever changing the conversation about gay culture. Filmmaker David Weissman offers a moving portrait of the AIDS crisis and its legacy in the documentary We Were Here: Voices From the AIDS Years in San Francisco, in which people who lived in the city before, during, and after the height of the AIDS pandemic discuss not just disease, death, and consequences, but how the community learned to come together to support and protect one another in a time of darkness. We Were Here was screened as a work in progress at the 2010 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.