Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2008 > March > 10 > Entry
Capsule review: ‘Sex Positive’
A nearly forgotten part of contemporary medical and sexual history moves to the foreground in “Sex Positive” in this portrait of Richard Berkowitz, who helped pioneer safe sex practices during the first years of the AIDS/HIV crisis in the 1980s. An unlikely hero, Berkowitz was a gay hustler who came to the now-obvious conclusion, along with virologist Joseph Sonnabend and activist Michael Callen, that if fluids carried the retrovirus, then the use of condoms and other preventative measures would cut down on the spread of the disease. Producer/director Daryl Wein does a good job in this doc establishing the historical context of sexual liberation in the 1970s and the deep fear that any intrusion into the sexual sphere for public health reasons would compromise the hard-won gains for liberty, dignity and self-determination. Always helps to be reminded of even recent history.
9 p.m. Friday at the Austin Convention Center
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