(2015)

A New Documentary Film
by Demetrea Dewald & Rebekah Dewald

Followed by a live Q&A with Demetrea Dewald, Rebekah Dewald, Patrick O'Connell, & Ron Ehmke.

What started as a singular conversation with Patrick O'Connell, founder of Visual AIDS, about bringing the Red Ribbon Project and Day Without Art to the world, grew into a symphony of New York City artists' voices sharing their passion, compassion, pain, and strength in the face of AIDS. For the first time they collectively impart their journeys in art and activism into why we act, why we love, and how we deal with loss. This is the story of how they responded.

Demetrea Dewald and Rebekah Dewald are a mother-daughter filmmaking team. Their unique vision has created a powerful story of love, loss, burnout, and resistance. In Let the Record Show they explore artwork that challenged the status quo, changed patients' rights, worked to end gender discrimination, and blurred the lines between private and public, transforming an entire culture with it. What emerges is a call to action as relevant now as it ever was.

Let The Record Show questions the future of LGBT and AIDS activism. There have been more U.S. casualties to AIDS than WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined. Are we prepared to continue losing the battle against AIDS? Are we ready to address homophobia and the AIDS stigma in an honest, public dialogue? Can we envision a day without AIDS, and what are we willing to do to make it a reality?

PANELISTS:

Demetrea Dewald and Rebekah Dewald, director/editor and producer of Let the Record Show, which December 1–3, 2015 had its NYC premiere at the Leslie Lohman Museum for Gay & Lesbian Art.

Patrick O'Connell is one of the major voices and on-screen artist-activists interviewed in Let the Record Show, as well as an advisor to the filmmakers. He moved from NYC to Buffalo in 1977–1978 to serve as one of Hallwalls' first directors, returning to NYC less than a year later, where, just a few years after that, he was one of the founders of Visual AIDS, A Day Without Art, and the Red Ribbon Project.

Ron Ehmke is a Buffalo-based writer and performer, who, during his eight-year tenure as Hallwalls' full-time Performance Curator (1985-1993), brought many of the artists and activist groups featured in this film to Buffalo to perform or speak at Hallwalls. Ron was also one of the co-founders of ACT-UP Buffalo, which met weekly at Hallwalls' 4th-floor gallery at 700 Main Street, from which base they planned and carried out numerous public actions, raising local awareness of the AIDS crisis from its earliest days.