Buddies (1985) and It’s a Sin (2021) – Double Bill

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Double Bill: Buddies (1985) and It’s a Sin (2021) are available to rent, buy, and stream on digital platforms, as well as on Blu-ray and DVD.

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DOUBLE BILL

BUDDIES (1985)

In the summer of 1985, as HIV and AIDS tore through communities, a small-budget film debuted at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco: Arthur Bressan Jr’s Buddies. This low-budget film would quietly and confidently challenge perceptions while giving a voice to communities isolated by their governments and politicians: communities where heartbreak, anger and pain had become part of daily life.

Arthur Bressan Jr.’s Buddies began filming in May 1985 on a shoestring budget of $27,000 and was completed in just four months. The story opens in a New York hospital, where twenty-five-year-old David (David Schachter) is given medical robes, masks, and gloves before entering a single, isolated hospital room. David is there to meet Robert (Geoff Edholm), a thirty-two-year-old man from California who is desperately attempting to fight AIDS, which is now ravaging his body.

Robert spent his life campaigning for equality after being disowned by his parents when he came out; David, by contrast, is in a long-term relationship with close, supportive friends and parents. David isn’t interested in politics and prefers to keep his head down, but he also felt a need to volunteer as a “Buddy” and see first-hand what AIDS was doing to his community. At the same time, Robert, despite his belief in political action and disruption, is less than convinced about having a volunteer “Buddy” visit him. But as the two men slowly get to know each other and Robert opens up about his past and the disease now stripping him of everything, David learns that being a “Buddy” is far more than just conversation and support; it’s a life-changing journey.

Buddies was Arthur Bressan Jr’s final film before losing his own battle with AIDS in 1987. Eight years after the quiet release of Buddies, Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, would be hailed as a groundbreaking HIV and AIDS drama, yet it was Buddies that should have received that praise and recognition. 

Buddies is not only one of the most powerful films about the HIV and AIDS pandemic ever made, but without doubt the most urgent and important. Bressan defied the fear and oppression surrounding LGBTQ+ communities by bringing Buddies to the screen, and in turn, he opened the door to writers, community activists, and those lying in hospital beds alone and afraid to share their stories. Buddies was Bressan’s defiant, urgent, emotional and angry call for society, communities and individuals to wake up to the suffering and horror AIDS was inflicting on their doorsteps: a call for humanity, love, medical facts, research and hope in the darkest of times.

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DOUBLE BILL

IT’S A SIN (2021)

When Russell T Davies’ groundbreaking Queer as Folk first aired on the 23rd of February 1999, the landscape of TV and queer storytelling changed forever. Queer as Folk sparked a newfound confidence in the LGBTQ+ community as it slowly emerged from the horror and oppression of the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s in a country that felt reborn following New Labour’s election victory in 1997. It was a similar optimism that surrounded inner-city ’70s gay life before the arrival of HIV and AIDS, and through It’s a Sin, Davies would explore how that ’70s and early ’80s hope for change would come crashing down suddenly and violently, leading to two decades of oppression and fear, and a fresh and urgent fight for equality that would eventually lead to the world portrayed in Queer as Folk.

Both dramas are inextricably linked, one exploring the post-AIDS world of the late ’90s and early ’00s, where communities had begun to rebuild and reshape the LGBTQ+ experience and the other exploring the world torn apart by the AIDS epidemic and the differing attitudes, thoughts and beliefs the LGBTQ+ community held as it arrived on our shores.

Richie (Olly Alexander) is a middle-class boy from the Isle of Wight who, like so many young gay men of the time, has just moved to London to embrace his sexuality and escape his closeted home life. For Richie, his university education is an escape door that opens up a world of possibilities as he explodes from the closet and breathes in a newfound world of sex, liberation, adventure, and dance. Richie’s view of the world is full of free-wheeling love and fun, as he creates two separate lives, one out and proud and the other bathed in secrecy. His friend Jill (Lydia West) is a stabilising force in Richie’s life; she is loving, accepting, and grounded, and her friendship is a foundation of security.

Meanwhile, Roscoe (Omari Douglas) is outwardly fierce yet internally tender, his Nigerian family roots leading him to flee his Peckham family home in fear of religious conversion therapy or worse. Roscoe’s worldview is shaped by his intersectionality, anger, and defiance. In contrast, Colin (Callum Scott Howells), like Richie, has recently arrived in London after leaving his home in the Welsh valleys to pursue his career as a tailor, with the cultural shift he encounters both liberating and scary as he attempts to find his voice.

The LGBTQ+ community is often portrayed as homogeneous in dramas, but, like Arthur Bressan Jr.’s Buddies and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Davies is more interested in the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community’s experiences. In It’s a Sin, the importance of found family for those building new, and often secret, lives in big cities sits centre stage as an unknown virus threatens the security of their at times dysfunctional and confrontational, but always loving, found family unit.

At the heart of this ‘found family’ experience is the social and political impact of Thatcher’s new Britain, and the political beliefs, behaviours and actions the government would encourage and enact, increasing isolation, fear and oppression while making the LGBTQ+ community’s response to the virus so challenging.

The government would encourage messaging that bred fear and persecution, creating a public image of HIV and AIDS that would last for decades and create untold damage for future generations. While never making it overt in public, the government actively encouraged people to view gay men as dangerous and sexually permissive carriers of disease, adding to the layers of shame created throughout childhood and adolescence for so many men, while encouraging them to suffer in silence in fear of public reaction. It’s a Sin not only confronts the systemic failures of the Thatcher government but also the willful inaction and misinformation that increased death and suffering, and the role of government in the orchestrated persecution that followed.

Against this backdrop, It’s a Sin celebrates the courage of a community under siege and the fortitude of those who fought and campaigned, whether gay, bisexual or straight. The fight for healthcare, understanding and equality was full of individual and group bravery, and it’s here where It’s a Sin is at its most powerful and emotional. It’s a Sin reminds us all of our capacity to fight for justice, dignity and human rights in a world where governments refuse to listen. It asks us to hold onto the memory of those who came before us and keep them close to our hearts as we continue the fight, which certainly isn’t over, for community, justice, and equality.

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