Fast Trip, Long Drop + Chance of a Lifetime

Film

“Fuck you. I don’t want to be yours or anyone else’s fucking model. I’m not a hero.” After a positive HIV diagnosis in 1988, artist Gregg Bordowitz came out to his family, joined ACT UP, and reckoned with his identity as queer and Jewish. His diaristic chronicling of his relationship with his traditional suburban family and the early days of ACT UP is a trove of ethical and moral introspection, taking on a sprawling communal movement and revealing its heart-wrenching individuality. He states, “At 23, I found what I’ve been looking for all my life—a sense of belonging.”

Paired with Bordowitz’s intimate journal is the unprecedented, sexually explicit videotape Chance of a Lifetime, one of the first safer-sex educational videos ever produced. Directed by John Lewis and produced by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc, the ancestor organization of ACT UP, the tape is astonishing for its ambitions to curb the damage of AIDS at the height of its reach. The first segment is a screwball comedy routine starring an interracial couple who can’t quite seem to connect; the second a fiery, feverish chronicle of a leatherman dominating a young stud at the Meatpacking District’s famed Mineshaft bar; the third a tender, touching cowboys-and-outlaws roleplaying scene set in the Fire Island Pines. The end credits roll with a heartfelt, original show tune written and performed by legendary composer Ricky Ian Gordon.

As the spiritual and chronological midpoint of this series, these works will be preceded by Uzi Parnes’s I Wasn’t Counted at the March, a marvelous stream-of-consciousness videotape that documents an early 1990s pride parade that includes a very special tribute to Marsha P. Johnson. Program 108 min.

I Wasn’t Counted at the March. 1993. USA. Directed by Uzi Parnes. Digital projection. New digital preservation from original U-matic master. 7 min.

Fast Trip, Long Drop. 1993. USA. Directed by Gregg Bordowitz. Digital projection. Digital preservation from BetaSP. 54 min.

Chance of a Lifetime. 1985. USA. Directed by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc. Digital projection. New digital preservation from original U-matic master. 47 min.

Please be advised: Chance of a Lifetime contains explicit sexual content.

This film accompanies “Now We Think as We Fuck”: Queer Liberation to Activism.

Wed, Feb 5, 2020, 6:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

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