For our second night of Epidemics on Film on October 15^th we will screen short films that have confronted the controversies associated with the polio, HIV/AIDS, and Parkinson’s epidemics in order to judge how the medical establishment, Big Pharma, and government authorities confronted difficult life and death choices. Films to be included are The Polio Crusade which celebrated a government-private citizen network that succeeded in creating two vaccines in record time, The Lazarus Effect which revealed that 20 million Africans were infected with HIV/AIDS and in Zambia one out of seven was HIV-positive, and What a Load of Balls,  a cheeky British satire on how difficult it is to cope with Parkinson’s. For a brief finale we will screen an excerpt from Red Hot = Blue, a new kind of AIDS musical using Cole Porter songs.

            The host for the series is Tom Zaniello, professor emeritus of literature and film studies, who has published extensively on the relationships of film, popular culture, and social class. His latest book, Epidemic Films To Die For: A Chronicle of the Covid-19 Plague Years, will be published in October.