Killing Patient Zero

The documentary is about the early years of the AIDS epidemic. It begins with the period after the Stonewall riots. In those years the gay liberation movement was rising. A generation was living the freedom it had just won. Nobody knew the epidemic was coming. The disease killed thousands of people within a short time. Politicians stayed silent for a long while. The mainstream press looked away from it too. Gaétan Dugas was a Canadian flight attendant. He himself offered to help the scientists researching the origins of the disease. What he told them was later put to another use. The man came to be called patient zero. He was treated as the person who brought AIDS. Fran Lebowitz and Richard Berkowitz speak in the ninety nine minute documentary. It is a Canadian production Laurie Lynd finished in 2019.