How to Survive a Plague at BFI Southbank

By the mid 1980s, Greenwich Village’s once thriving gay community was faced with an appalling scenario: astonishing numbers of people were dying by AIDs, and there was no cure in sight. Not only were hospitals turning away AIDs victims, but the community was subject to a brutal backlash of homophobia, with the corpses of AIDs victims even rejected by funeral parlours. Driven by desperation, the gay community were forced to become change-making activists - a role in which they soon found they excelled. Frustrated by a drug testing protocol that had not prioritised AIDs research - and in which new drugs took up to a decade of testing before approval - the community mobilised through very public demonstrations, and by equipping themselves with the scientific knowledge to spearhead a completely new strategy towards drug development. We follow the story of a number of prominent activists as they battle against the clock in a race for their lives.