Gregg Bordowitz Double Features:
Two Nights
On occasion of Gregg Bordowitz's This is Not a Love Song at The Brick, we are thrilled to announce a series of Bordowitz’s early films, including some aspect of a shared lifestyle (1986), and Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993) on March 14th. Followed by another double feature of Portraits of People living with HIV (1993), and Habit (2001) on March 15th. These screenings begin at 7pm and will be held at Now Instant Image Hall in Chinatown. Each screening will be followed by a Q+A with artist and director Gregg Bordowitz.
Our events are free to the public, please RSVP in the link below.
MARCH 14th DOUBLE FEATURE
Friday, March 14th 2025
Doors at 6:30, screenings begin at 7pm
Now Instant Image Hall, 939 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA
some aspect of a shared lifestyle, 1986, 22min
Focusing on early media reportage of the AIDS epidemic and the struggle for gay rights, some aspect of a shared lifestyle begins with the outraged response of the gay community to the 1982 Supreme Court ruling upholding a sodomy law in the State of Georgia, effectively banning gay sex. Reframing the debate from one of moral calumny to a matter of the Constitutional right to privacy, Bordowitz successfully portrays the complexity of issues surrounding the AIDS epidemic as it emerged in the early 1980s in this country, forcefully arguing for the need to confront AIDS as an equal-opportunity threat to all members of society.
Fast Trip, Long Drop, 1993, 54min
In the spring of 1988, video-maker/activist Gregg Bordowitz tested HIV-antibody positive. He then quit drinking and taking drugs and came out to his parents as a gay man. This imaginative autobiographical documentary began as an inquiry into these events and the cultural climate surrounding them. While writing the film, a close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and his grandparents were killed in a car accident. The cumulative impact of these events challenged his sense of identity, the way he understood his own diagnosis, and the relationships between Illness and history.
MARCH 15th DOUBLE FEATURE
Saturday, March 15th, 2025
Doors at 6:30pm, screenings begin at 7pm
Now Instant Image Hall, 939 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles, CA
Portraits of People living with HIV, 1993, 46 min
An up-close compilation of interviews and discussions with people living with HIV in the early 1990s.
"We have to use these forms, no matter how tired they are, in order to experiment and to develop new forms. It’s the way I feel about art and documentaries: how are we going to develop more effective means of representation ‘for us’, for the people who are affected by AIDS, unless we use the available forms? That means employing clichéd forms. What we can try to do is to alter them and make them signify for us, so that what we come up with is something radically different than what is presented to us. It’s radically different because it's ‘us’ making meaning about our situation, and not just waiting for an invitation from the culture, which someone else has always defined."
— Douglas Crimp & Gregg Bordowitz, Art and Activism in AIDS, the artists’ response, Hoyt L. Sherman Gallery, and Ohio State University, 1989
Habit, 2001, 52min
Habit is an autobiographical documentary that follows the current history of the AIDS epidemic along dual trajectories: the efforts of South Africa’s leading AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign, struggling to gain access to AIDS drugs and the daily routine of the videomaker, a veteran AIDS activist in the U.S. who has been living with AIDS for more than ten years. The videomaker moves through his day, attending to mundane errands, eating, taking pills, having conversations with friends (some of whom have diseases such as AIDS and Breast Cancer, and others of whom are healthy), as recurring memories of a recent trip to South Africa interrupt the routine. Habit presents a rigorous working-through of ideas concerning privilege, ethics, responsibility, futility, solidarity, hope, and struggle.
Fast Trip, Long Drop, 1993, video, 54min, image copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Habit, 2001, video, 52min, image copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.