Customer Reviews

Common Threads - Stories from the Quilt

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This emotionally stunning film deservedly won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Friends and family tell the stories of five disparate individuals whose lives are lovingly represented by panels in the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt: David Mandell, Jr., an 11-year-old hemophiliac; Dr. Tom Waddell, Olympic athlete and organizer of the Gay Games; Robert Perryman, a former drug addict turned proud husband and father; Jeffrey Sevchik, the lover of film historian, author, and gay activist Vito Russo; and David C. Campbell, a gay "everyman" whose story is touchingly told by his dying partner, Lt. Commander Tracey Torrey. The threads of these persons' courageous battles with AIDS are interwoven with archival news footage detailing the history of the disease's spread throughout America, and examples of how the United States government and public did - or perhaps more accurately, often did not - respond to the growing crisis. The film ends with the surviving loved ones describing the experiences of making the Quilt panels, and then details the first national exhibition of the Quilt in Washington, D. C. in October 1987. (The Quilt was last displayed in Washington in 1996, and had grown to over twenty times the size shown here.)

The raw emotions of the storytellers are incredibly powerful in their purity and honesty; it's impossible not to be moved to tears as David Mandell's father speaks of his child's last Christmas, or Russo tells the story of visiting his partner's body in the morgue. The film footage is beautifully supported by Dustin Hoffman's eloquent narration (his voice has never been so convicted yet quietly subdued in any of his film roles), and hauntingly underscored by the music of Bobby McFerrin performed by Voicestra.

"Common Threads" is an absolutely must-see film that not only reveals the human face of HIV and AIDS, and gives voice to those who are left behind to grieve in the wake of death and suffering. With each scene, the movie also offers larger evidence of humanity's capacity to cope with devastating tragedy; to express compassion and selflessness; and above all else, to love wholly and unconditionally through even the worst of circumstances.

I am probably one of the few people that has this on LaserDisc. I was extremely touched by the dedication to this video. It was self evident in the quality of the sound and video, as well as the choice of narrators and musical background.

The Times of Harvey Milk has probably topped this one, but the AIDS crisis has not gone away. Please ... please publish this one on DVD. Thanks.

rcc

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are two of the finest documentarians we have around today. From making one of the best documentaries ever, "The Times of Harvey Milk", to the cutting edge "Celluloid Closet", their movies chronicle grand times and the people that are behind those times. Another tour de force work is their response to the horrific AIDS crisis, in the movie "Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt".

Wanting to make a film that accompanied the amazing paneled quilt that was being created as a response to ignored AIDS epidemic. Epstein and Friedman decided to highlight the people behind the quilt. They read thousands of letters, met people, and selected seven stories to highlight, which make up the crux of the film. Sallie Perryman, who's husband drug use brought on the disease, to Vito Russo talking about his best friend, the people speak of their loved ones on film, and their ensuing sickness, with honesty and compassion. In addtion, the filmmakers included archival footage, tracing the development of the disease, in a somewhat shocking and insensitive way at first. By the time the quilt is unfolded, you are moved, and touched by these people's lives, so that if you didn't know anyone who was on the AIDS quilt, you knew seven people now.

Common Threads won the Academy award for best Documentary, and deservedly so. This a film that should be celebrated, and remembered, as a visual love note to all of those souls that we lost to AIDS.

Throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s a diagnosis of HIV/AIDS was both an immediate death sentence and social horror: most patients died in less than a year and their march to the grave was accompanied by horrendous social stigma. Released in 1989, COMMON THREADS: STORIES FROM THE QUILT captured both aspects of the AIDS epidemic as it unfolded in the United States--and in doing so was instrumental in turning the tide of public sentiment about the disease.

The documentary uses "the AIDS Quilt" as a touch stone. Conceived by gay activist Cleve Jones in 1985 as way of showing the ever-increasing death count, the quilt (created and maintained by The NAMES Project) consists of pannels three feet by six feet, each one a memorial to a person who has died of AIDS. COMMON THREADS explores the quilt as a memorial by focusing on the stories behind five particular pannels and the people they honor.

The film unfolds in three distinct parts. We are first introduced to both the AIDS epidemic and the quilt in a general way; thereafter the film primarily focuses on the "storytellers"--people who were intimately associated with the five victims and created quilt pannels for them. In the first third, we learn of their lives, their work, their families; in the second portion we learn of how they coped, or failed to cope, with the diagnosis; finally, we learn of their deaths, and the film concludes with a display of the quilt as whole on the Washington DC mall.

It would be difficult to say which of the stories is the most touching, and I suspect each individual will have a different reaction. For me, it was two: the story of David Mandell Jr., a child with hemophilia who was infected with AIDS via tainted blood products, and Tracy Torrey, a naval commander who lived his life in closet, lost his lover to AIDS, and as the interview was filmed was himself close to death. But one should not shy away from COMMON THREADS from fear it will be an endless grim display. Although painful, it is hopeful and often powerful.

The DVD comes with several extras, including an audio commentary by the directors and collection of additional interviews, most notably one by Cleve Jones. An important document of the AIDS epidemic and strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I am a health teacher who first saw this moving film right after it came out. Always seeking a way to help my students know the history behind this pandemic, this film remains a classic in my video library. Everyone must KNOW what the attitudes were at the start of the epidemic, and the stories shared in this film hold nothing back. My students learn so much in this film; they learn about grief, and they learn that they must never, never forget the pain and suffering of the early days of AIDS. I think most importantly, however, is that the memories of those who came before are kept alive in this film. If you are looking for a way to remind people of how powerful love truly is in the face of despair, this movie is it! I've also had the honor of attending the AIDS Quilt in its last full display in Washington, CD in 1996, and, have hosted two quilt displays at my own school. Seeing the stories of David, Jeff, Tom, Tracey, Perryman, and their families play out in this moving tribute is something I will continue to use in my classroom until I leave teaching. Thanks for this beautiful gift!

This is a heartbreaking and amazing documentary. Do not neglect to watch the special features. Vito Russo's ACT UP Speech alone is worth the price of this dvd.

Jeffrey Friedman and Bob Epstein ("The Celluloid Closet" and "The Times of Harvey Milk") in this documentary that won an Oscar for best documentary feature film in 1990 put a face on the AIDS epidemic. "Common Threads" focuses primarily on five individuals with AIDS: "Dr. Tom Waddell; Robert Perryman, a drug user; David Mandell, Junior, a hemophiliac who died at the young age of 12; Jeff Sevcik, whose lover was Vito Russo of "The Celluloid Closet" and a member of ACT-UP and David Campbell whose lover was Navy Commander Tracey Torrey (who made his own panel for the AIDS quilt). Just as important are these individuals' caretakers/story-tellers: Waddell's wife Sara Lewinstein, Perryman's wife Sally Perryman, David's mother, Campbell's lover Tracey Torrey and Sevcik's lover Vito Russo.

Interspersed with the lives and deaths of these individuals is news footage that begins with the reports of the first cases of AIDS or GRID, as it was first called, in San Francisco and New York. The numbers of new cases and deaths grow geometrically for years while the government does precious little to fund research about this killer disease. In case anyone who was alive at the time has forgotten, President Reagan gets singled out for doing essentially nothing.

Included on the DVD are commentary by the producer/directors, the ACT-UP speech by Vito Russo and interviews with Doctors Marcus Conant and Selma Dritz and Cleve Jones, the person who started the AIDS guilt. of San Francisco. Dr. Dritz tells a horrific story of being at the bedside of an early victim when he died. When she contacted his parents somewhere in the heartland of America, they told her to do whatever she wanted to do with the body, that they essentially were through with their son. (I knew of a similar incident in Atlanta in 1987 when a friend died. His family did not even come from Mississippi to claim his body.)

The film culminates with the unfurling of the quilt in 1989 in Washington, D. C. Almost 30 years after the first case of AIDS was reported, this beautiful film is just as powerful today as the day it was produced. It invokes many emotions: sorrow, some joy that we took care our own, and anger for all those lives that could possibly have been saved if our government had cared for the least of these: gay people, African Americans, IV drug users. I suspect that a hundred years from now that history will not be kind to those in authority during this awful time.

Common Threads - Stories From The Quilt certainly deserves the Oscar it won for best documentary in the spring of 1990. This moving motion picture paints a most human face on the HIV/AIDS crisis through interviews with family, friends, parents and lovers of those who either died of AIDS or who were themselves slowly dying of AIDS when this was filmed in 1989. The movie goes along at a good pace; you certainly won't feel bored by these heartbreaking stories which are moving and inspiring at once. The cinematography is excellent as well.

While the film spends most of its time on interviews with so many people who have had to face AIDS and deal with it all in their own personal ways, we do get news footage of the government not doing much about the epidemic until the situation became particularly bad in 1987. Rock Hudson's death from AIDS also encouraged people in mainstream society to finally take notice of the health crisis. Unfortunately, however, the government took too much time debating over what to do instead of acting; while Surgeon General Koop wanted to educate children, President Reagan essentially preferred to teach only abstinence as a way to fight AIDS.

But if there is a focus on the politics of AIDS and HIV in this motion picture, it is the real life stories we get that make this film infinitely more powerful and memorable. We see people from all walks of life talking so candidly about losing their loved ones and the extreme emotional angst they felt as their loved ones were dying and there was nothing that could be done about it, at least at the time this documentary was filmed. Specifically, one of the people we learn about is Dr. Tom Waddell, a former Olympic athlete, losing his life to AIDS before his very young daughter ever had a chance to know him. There's also a good amount of footage of a naval officer who, after he divorced his wife, spent five years with his partner; and the retired officer remembers his partner so fondly as he himself is dying of the disease. There's footage of Bobbi Campbell, "the AIDS poster boy;" and we see parents who are deeply scarred by the loss of their very young son David to AIDS which he contracted from a blood infusion; David was a hemophiliac. There's archival news footage of families with a child who had contracted AIDS being forced to leave town after their home was burnt to the ground in a case of suspected arson; and we eventually see people making the first pieces of the AIDS quilt in San Francisco back in 1987.

The DVD has some good extras, too. There's an "ACT UP" speech by Vito Russo, a gay man infected with HIV/AIDS; and there's a bonus short film of researchers and others speaking about AIDS that is very well done. There's an optional running commentary and a photo gallery as well.

All in all, this remains a fine documentary about the AIDS health crisis that I recommend for people with AIDS as well as their families and loved ones; and anyone in the health care field should watch this as well. It will be a good addition to your DVD collection.

This film in done well. Since the time of this film the quilt has grown. I think it is time for HBO to do a new version and shown a new generation how the AIDS Memorial Quilt has many stories to tell. I was honored in 1990 to be asked to help in making of a panel. Thank you HBO.