We Were Here

September 30, 2011
By Marc Glassman

We Were Here
David Weissman, director and producer
Bill Weber, co-director and editor
Feature documentary w/Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark, Eileen Glutzer

We Were Here is a poignant documentary that looks back at the terrible times when AIDS first hit San Francisco. The fear of the “gay cancer” was palpable throughout the gay community in those early days–and straight society as well. No one understood what was happening. It took medicine a decade to catch up—and during that time, from the early ’80s to the early ’90s, over 15,000 people died in the Bay Area. Director David Weissman focuses on five survivors: an artist, a nurse, a florist and two activists to tell the tale. It’s a moving, old-fashioned doc feature and certainly worth viewing.