We Were Here

I didn't know my eyes could produce this many tears. It's the most effective talking-heads documentary I've ever seen. Forget the cloying trash that they make today about the AIDS epidemic. This is the real deal.

This is a really fine piece of work.

The BBC screened it on BBC4 in Febrary 2012 and made it available via i-Player also.

Anyone who lived in the Bay Area during the eighties will be moved, informed and educated by this documentary. As a young gay geek in San Francisco in those years, I was overwhelmed by the deaths and suffering I saw and often could not make sense of it. This documentary really helps.

The tales of the attacks on civil liberties by the bigots, and the personal tales were emotive and powerful.

Now I salute those survivors and hope their stories will stimulate others in future onslaughts.

I went to see "We Were Here" today at the Cinéma-Village theater in New York. I was afraid it would disappear before I got the chance to see it. This movie was recommended by a friend who is a producer at KQED in San Francisco as being the ultimate resource on San Francisco during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Along with Randy Shilts's seminal book, "And the Band Played on," he was certainly right.

One great element of "We Were Here" is that it gives several quite different perspectives on what the HIV epidemic in San Francisco was like at that time: Ed, the misfit who found his place in the gay community by volunteering with people with AIDS early in the epidemic; Daniel, the Jewish artist who felt he had found his true family among San Francisco's gay men and then lost them all within a few painful years; Paul, the high-profile political activist; Guy, the big-hearted, philosophical black flower vendor; and Eileen, the lesbian nurse who served at ground zero of the epidemic and stuck with it with grit and compassion to the end.

Like Ed, I didn't fit in well in the "gay community" during my years in San Francisco. So disconnected was I that I did not know a lot of what was happening in the early and mid-1980s, although I remember Guy the florist, who always had a smile for every passerby on the street corner where he worked, and I remember James Harning, a beautiful young man who died a hard death in 1992. "We Were Here" helped me understand much of what was going on all around me in those days. It will do the same for others who weren't "there," for reasons of either age or geography, and it will be a moving, bittersweet reminder for those who did survive those difficult years in San Francisco.

Kate Menz Riggs/Welte Humanities II 5 March 2016 We Were Here Review

This documentary has powerful insight about LGBT rights and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is a very heart touching documentary of four gay men who lived and survived through the entire HIV/AIDS epidemic and are here now to share not only their stories, but all of their friends' and families' that died from this horrible, extravagant disease. In the 1970's, San Francisco was the place all gay men wanted to go. There were streets dedicated to them such as Castro Street and gay sex was highly encouraged, it was a place for gay people to really live, and these four men and directors, David Weissman and Bill Weber give a phenomenal look on what it was really like. When the "disease that hit the gays" hit San Francisco it hit hard. The four men will say "people dropped like flies," and the depth and detail their stories provide people with a true visual of the catastrophe. One step at a time, the sense of community grows larger and larger in not only the gay people that were getting sick, but the thousands of volunteers spending their time to help them. This film gives you a real perspective of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and really how the LGBT community was affected by it. We Were Here will offer the true inside look on the AIDS epidemic.

An amazing work. I just saw this with a friend who was too young to really remember what was going on in the late 80's and 90's. We both cried throughout the film, a good thing. It was a healing response for me, having lost too many friends and acquaintances. I am plenty grateful for this opportunity to hear the "survivors'" share in hindsight with such clarity. I knew what was going on in San Francisco proper through others' experiences, but nothing nearly as comprehensive as this film. My experience was in the military and my friends' being sent home when they tested positive ('86-'88), which was a death sentence at that time and then in the Montrose in Houston after the military. Thank you so very much for making this difficult but vital film. It will stand as a powerful reminder of what was and teach generations to come.