Sex Positive
Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
- Director:Daryl Wein
- Release Date:13 March 2009 (USA)
- Genre:Documentary
- Runtime:75 min
Cast
- Don Adler
- Richard Berkowitz
- Susan Brown
- Demetre Daskalakis
- Richard Dworkin
Official Site:-
Maybe it took somebody with no investment in the sexual-culture wars of the 1980s, like 24-year-old filmmaker Daryl Wein, to rediscover a lightning-rod figure like safe-sex pioneer Richard… Maybe it took somebody with no investment in the sexual-culture wars of the 1980s, like 24-year-old filmmaker Daryl Wein, to rediscover a lightning-rod figure like safe-sex pioneer Richard Berkowitz and present him without prejudice. A one-time S/M hustler, Berkowitz and his friend Michael Callen, supported by controversial AIDS researcher Joseph Sonnabend, began urging gay men to avoid unprotected anal sex as early as 1982 — and were treated as pariahs by the mainstream gay community. Berkowitz is a fascinating, prickly, decidedly unsaintly character, and Wein’s film provides a fascinating and crucial slice of traumatic sexual history that’s all but invisible to younger generations.
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