Three powerful docs showcasing community medicine now available
As the struggle continues to ensure healthcare as a human right, vulnerable groups are continually thrust into precarity. For December, Cinema Politica assembled a program of films that imagine worlds beyond the neoliberal violence of the Western healthcare industry. From Honduras to New York, this trio of docs captures three community-lead movements to create healthcare access for neglected populations. Our selections include a new acquisition of Mia Donovan’s DOPE IS DEATH, alongside two classics: Jim Hubbard’s UNITED IN ANGER and Beth Geglia and Jesse Freeston’s REVOLUTIONARY MEDICINE.
Dope is Death
In 1973, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, along with fellow Black Panthers and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America. DOPE IS DEATH explores how this form of radical harm reduction was a revolutionary act toward the government programs that transfixed the lives of black and brown communities throughout the South Bronx.
DOPE IS DEATH utilizes an abundant archive while giving us insight into how the acupuncture clinic rose to prominence and, despite funding challenges, still functions to this day. Some of those who benefited from the program became acupuncturists themselves. Dr. Mutulu’s legacy is cemented within this profound story of community healing and activism. (Amir George of True/False)
Available for purchase/rental in Canada only.
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP is a unique feature-length documentary that combines startling archival footage that puts the audience on the ground with the activists and the remarkably insightful interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project to explore ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from a grassroots perspective – how a small group of men and women of all races and classes, came together to change the world and save each other’s lives.
The film takes the viewer through the planning and execution of a half dozen exhilarating major actions including Seize Control of the FDA, Stop the Church, and Day of Desperation, with a timeline of many of the other zaps and actions that forced the U.S. government and mainstream media to deal with the AIDS crisis.
UNITED IN ANGER reveals the group’s complex culture – meetings, affinity groups, and approaches to civil disobedience mingle with profound grief, sexiness, and the incredible energy of ACT UP.
Revolutionary Medicine: A Story of the First Garifuna Hospital
Could a remote hospital that runs on solar panels, in a community without paved roads or electricity, provide a global model for health care? Since arriving in Honduras in 1797, the Garifuna people have struggled against exclusion, discrimination and dispossession of their land.
Today, their first hospital provides holistic care, for free, without receiving a cent from the government. This is a story of how and why they do it.
