Film Data

In the early 1980s, a young doctor at UCLA reports a strange immune disorder among gay men—the world’s first warning sign of the epidemic to come. In the decades that followed, Los Angeles would play a critical role in the battle against HIV/AIDS as doctors, movie stars, studio moguls and activists came together to change the path of the epidemic and how the world saw it. Commitment to Life documents this incredible drama—Rock Hudson and Eazy-E, Elizabeth Taylor and David Geffen, the Red Ribbon and Philadelphia, ACT UP and APLA—through the stories of those who lived through it. Using first-person interviews, rare archival and activist footage, and scenes from star-studded Hollywood fundraisers, Commitment to Life resurrects one of the epidemic’s most compelling histories—in order that we never repeat it.