Review by Gülcin Wilhelm, Freitag (Germany), 02.14.2003

"This is a war, but only you hear the bombs dropping. No one else notices -- they go on with their daily lives." So went the anguished cry of AIDS activists in the eighties, when the thousands of persons dead from AIDS were regarded officially as a "fringe-group matter." This statement can be heard in the American documentary Fight Back, Fight AIDS: 15 Years of ACT UP (2002, 75:00, DV) by James Wentzy. Himself one of the movement's warriors, Wentzy has captured 15 years of the activities of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) with his video camera. The film is one of five contributions on the subject of AIDS which were shown this year in the panorama category of the Berlinale. The fact that the Berlin film festival had shown no films concerned with AIDS for four years, in contrast to what was the case in the heyday of the problem's coverage, elucidates the wide-spread illusion, which clearly had taken hold of the film world as well as everyone else, the deceitful optimism which held that the illness was now limited to Africa, and which in the western world had led increasingly to a neglect of preventive measures.

This 75-minute documentary film shows different public demonstrations carried out by ACT UP. They were directed against the ignorance both of the political structure and of the media. These spectacular actions range from the occupation of the stock exchange on Wall Street all the way to throwing the ashes of their AIDS-dead onto the front lawn of the White House. The anger of the activists was aimed to show that they regarded those who died in consequence of HIV to be the victims of a political assassination. They accused the government of responsibility for each death of every minute which delayed the development of medicines for AIDS.