Greetings from Washington, D.C.

I'd very much like to see supplementary materials on this- given the nightmare of AIDS that was just beginning to be felt in 1981 when this documentary was released, I was extremely curious as to how that terrible time affected the many interviewees here. Even the opening credits showing empty rooms of normal looking houses and apartments, decked out for anniversaries and birthdays of just for morning breakfasts, all showing framed pictures of this October 1979 march, seem to indicate an unfathomable grief and sense of loss. But that of course must be the result of watching this in 2023, knowing the unpredictable tragedy about to crash into so many lives, of people who seem so ineffably joyful and determined. That's what any home movie does, doesn't it? The preservation of a feeling that time inevitably turns into melancholy. The past is gone...the people you loved aren't there anymore. Tragedy divides our lives into befores and afters. History is just a litany of loss. We romanticize as a defense mechanism, because to face the relentlessness of life and death head-on is too painful. We don't want any story to end- we try and continue it after the credits roll but Dorothy Parker was right. "In all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending."