An amazing work. I just saw this with a friend who was too young to really remember what was going on in the late 80's and 90's. We both cried throughout the film, a good thing. It was a healing response for me, having lost too many friends and acquaintances. I am plenty grateful for this opportunity to hear the "survivors'" share in hindsight with such clarity. I knew what was going on in San Francisco proper through others' experiences, but nothing nearly as comprehensive as this film. My experience was in the military and my friends' being sent home when they tested positive ('86-'88), which was a death sentence at that time and then in the Montrose in Houston after the military. Thank you so very much for making this difficult but vital film. It will stand as a powerful reminder of what was and teach generations to come.
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vacaville-shane20 September 2011
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manschelde-17 February 2012This is a really fine piece of work.
The BBC screened it on BBC4 in Febrary 2012 and made it available via i-Player also.
Anyone who lived in the Bay Area during the eighties will be moved, informed and educated by this documentary. As a young gay geek in San Francisco in those years, I was overwhelmed by the deaths and suffering I saw and often could not make sense of it. This documentary really helps.
The tales of the attacks on civil liberties by the bigots, and the personal tales were emotive and powerful.
Now I salute those survivors and hope their stories will stimulate others in future onslaughts. -
The AIDS Epidemic first reached San Francisco and its vibrant gay community in the late 1970s. A mystery to doctors, both in form and how it was being transmitted, the disease that would come to be termed the 'gay plague' spread rapidly. By the start of the 1980s, men were rapidly presenting with symptoms of both Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia. With treatments having little effect, nothing could be done but to help them die.
Weissman and Weber's 'We Were Here' is not an exploration of the impact of the AIDS epidemic per se, but of a chapter in American social history. Do not expect any reflection on the ongoing African epidemic for example, the focus is the effect on individuals and the community in San Francisco that went beyond that simply of illness and death. How does one retain moral strength when friends and loved ones are dying of an illness that is not only untreatable, but for a long time, simply unknown? In as much, the directors should be commended for finding a cast of people both so involved in the crisis, yet affected in such different ways by the devastation wrought. The inclusion of a lesbian nurse who worked in the city's first specific-AIDS ward and later helped organize a number of clinical trials is a notable touch given the hostility between the gay and lesbian communities at the time. The manner in which the epidemic brought the two communities together, with lesbians holding blood banks to exploit their immunity, is one of the film's most tender and poignant moments.
Ultimately, what all the voices share are lives so deeply intertwined with the period that it is impossible not to get emotional listening to their recounting. Given the added context of the isolation and ostracision of the gay community during the period, one's admiration for the strength and perseverance shown by the men and women (one of whom is indeed HIV-positive) cannot be overstated.
Do not fear a kitsch, overly-sentimental eulogy to those who died. 'We Were Here' is as much about life-affirmation as it is death. The many who died would be proud to see how their loved ones have managed to move on and enjoy fulfilling lives, without ever forgetting them.
Concluding Thought: How to even begin to comprehend life as a homosexual in San Francisco at the time? The interviewees do their best to describe it, but I think even they know there are limits to what they can put across in words. -
benjweil22 September 2011I went to see "We Were Here" today at the Cinéma-Village theater in New York. I was afraid it would disappear before I got the chance to see it. This movie was recommended by a friend who is a producer at KQED in San Francisco as being the ultimate resource on San Francisco during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Along with Randy Shilts's seminal book, "And the Band Played on," he was certainly right.
One great element of "We Were Here" is that it gives several quite different perspectives on what the HIV epidemic in San Francisco was like at that time: Ed, the misfit who found his place in the gay community by volunteering with people with AIDS early in the epidemic; Daniel, the Jewish artist who felt he had found his true family among San Francisco's gay men and then lost them all within a few painful years; Paul, the high-profile political activist; Guy, the big-hearted, philosophical black flower vendor; and Eileen, the lesbian nurse who served at ground zero of the epidemic and stuck with it with grit and compassion to the end.
Like Ed, I didn't fit in well in the "gay community" during my years in San Francisco. So disconnected was I that I did not know a lot of what was happening in the early and mid-1980s, although I remember Guy the florist, who always had a smile for every passerby on the street corner where he worked, and I remember James Harning, a beautiful young man who died a hard death in 1992. "We Were Here" helped me understand much of what was going on all around me in those days. It will do the same for others who weren't "there," for reasons of either age or geography, and it will be a moving, bittersweet reminder for those who did survive those difficult years in San Francisco. -
wendyvanallen28 December 2011I was 18 years old when I went to Greenwich Village in 1985 to attend school at NYU. Before that, I had never been acquainted with the gay community and only knew closeted and frustrated gay people. My eyes were opened when I got there, in a wonderful way. But AIDS had beat me there and I remember the profound fear and controversy that was unfolding at the time.
This movie made me think of those days like I hadn't for years. It is an incredible, moving story which shows how much of a Holocaust the epidemic was. It is heartbreaking and poignant, with personal stories and compassion shown by the individuals involved which are heroic and inspiring.
I found this movie to be an important contribution to a period of American History that musn't be forgotten. I found myself shocked all over again by how widespread and devastating the epidemic was, how it was ignored and feared by a homophobic nation. I wonder how different our world might be today if we hadn't lost so many wonderful, creative young people to this plague?
AIDS survival has come a long way, but the disease is not gone. People really should rent this movie, it's like lighting a memorial candle of sorts. You will remember someone who is gone that touched your life in a special way. -
JvH485 December 2011I saw this film as part of the Ghent filmfestival 2011. At the time of this story (the 80's) the AIDS epidemic was something we read about in newspapers and magazines, at a safe distance so to speak. What I remember most was the long time it took before the underlying causes became clear. There were several theories at first, because no one could find a common denominator for two target groups that suffered most: hard drugs addicts and homosexuals. Nowadays, it is easy for us to see the connection as being obvious.
What we easily overlooked at that time was the impact it had on people that were hit, in combination with the hopelessness of their situation in the absence of a cure. Two quotes I can't wipe from my mind: [1] "Can't go on like this" at a moment that many friends and acquaintances died, without any effective remedy in sight. And quote [2] "Don't want to come out of this war like my father came out of the war he fought in", as if wondering how the world would be after this bad interval was over, and whether residual trauma's were to be expected. Not only quotes like these, but also the honest stories told by survivors that were interviewed, certainly left an impression on us.
All in all, I could do nothing more than giving the maximum score (5 out of 5) for the audience award when leaving the theater. We saw a very comprehensive overview of how people (re)acted on the disease, presented by all sorts of people involved. It also makes us think about possible new diseases that may befall on us. For example bird flu (H5N1) springs to mind, due to a recent publication about related work in Rotterdam (NL). While imagining that such a virus breaks loose, either this one or a new one for that matter, it is difficult to suppress post-apocalyptic visions about what may happen. -
fleckmo-467-3916094 September 2012As I listened to this small group of people talk about their experiences through the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and I watched the images flow by, I was distraught, reflective, amused, angry, inspired and always in rapt attention.
I moved to SF when I was 22 in 1984. I remember the B.A.R. obituaries. Seeing the sometimes shockingly short lifespans was sad, but you also read beautiful passages written by survivors to affirm and celebrate their friends' lives, and not just mourn their deaths.
Spoiler Alert!
What I love about this movie is what's brought home by one of the narrators at the end: The title of the movie, "We Were Here", refers to all of us who were here during that time - the living and the dead, who are still missed. -
proud_luddite13 February 2021This U.S. documentary chronicles the severe effect of AIDS on San Francisco 's gay community from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.
The main structure of this film is interviews with four gay men and a lesbian who lived in San Francisco during the tumultuous period. One of the interviewees is HIV positive. All interviewees are very likeable and eloquent. There are moments of fighting back tears while recalling sad times. These moments were very genuine and did not seem manipulative by the filmmakers.
The recollections begin in the 1970s when sexual liberation brought many gay people to San Francisco . It continues with the disease of AIDS when its causes were unknown, the onslaught of illnesses and deaths, the changes within the community along with the prejudices of the extreme right, and a new activism followed by drug cocktails that could prolong lives of those living with HIV.
This documentary is blessed with great footage. There were several photographs and archived film footage of the past including those of the interviewees at much younger ages. This footage also included details of skin lesions and extreme thinness of AIDS patients before they died. A before-and-after image of a man who was vibrant and muscular before the disease is shocking as is a San Francisco magazine that listed several pages of photographs of those who died of AIDS in one particular year in the 1980s.
The film is not all grim despite its content. The interviewees show lightness and humour when appropriate. While the occurrence of AIDS deaths has significantly decreased since the 1990s, this film is a solid reminder of a very dark period in recent history. The bad memories return quickly. - dbamateurcritic -
Beautiful documentary gamely attempts to tread through the chaotic AIDS crisis of the 1980s using only a handful of survivors as commentators. Co-directors David Weissman and Bill Weber pull it off, however, and "We Were Here" is surprisingly absorbing and moving as a result. The celebration of sexual freedom for homosexual men in the 1970s ground to a halt at the end of the decade by what was initially being referred to on the street as the Gay Cancer. These wonderful men who survived to tell their individual, intimate stories are marvelous to listen to, painting a portrait of an era that was, by turns, frightening and challenging, yet one that brought out a number of true heroes. ***1/2 from ****
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Kate Menz Riggs/Welte Humanities II 5 March 2016 We Were Here Review
This documentary has powerful insight about LGBT rights and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is a very heart touching documentary of four gay men who lived and survived through the entire HIV/AIDS epidemic and are here now to share not only their stories, but all of their friends' and families' that died from this horrible, extravagant disease. In the 1970's, San Francisco was the place all gay men wanted to go. There were streets dedicated to them such as Castro Street and gay sex was highly encouraged, it was a place for gay people to really live, and these four men and directors, David Weissman and Bill Weber give a phenomenal look on what it was really like. When the "disease that hit the gays" hit San Francisco it hit hard. The four men will say "people dropped like flies," and the depth and detail their stories provide people with a true visual of the catastrophe. One step at a time, the sense of community grows larger and larger in not only the gay people that were getting sick, but the thousands of volunteers spending their time to help them. This film gives you a real perspective of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and really how the LGBT community was affected by it. We Were Here will offer the true inside look on the AIDS epidemic. -
brialto4 April 2022I didn't know my eyes could produce this many tears. It's the most effective talking-heads documentary I've ever seen. Forget the cloying trash that they make today about the AIDS epidemic. This is the real deal.