Robin Campillo


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BPM (Beats per Minute)

Campillo, Robin

Last Updated: Feb-20-2020
Annotated by:
Zander, Devon

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

BPM is a fictional, French film about ACT UP Paris in the 1990s.  Directed by Robin Campillo, himself a veteran of Paris’s ACT UP, the film details the realities of being an HIV/AIDS political action group during an era of governmental inaction and lack of recognition of those most impacted by HIV and AIDS.  Initially, BPM focuses on the collection of individuals who make up ACT UP Paris and how they organize themselves to protest and advocate for greater media attention, better sexual education, and more access to new pharmaceutical data, among a myriad of other causes.  The film eventually shifts its focus from ACT UP as a group to two of its members, a couple, one of whom, Sean, is struggling with AIDS and Nathan, his partner, who supports him together with the the rest of ACT UP. 

In addition to its presentation of HIV activism, BPM documents what it meant to be HIV positive in a world without highly active antiretroviral therapy and where those most affected were largely ignored or even viewed with disdain.  Historical references ground the film firmly in the 1990s, including allusions to France’s infected blood scandal when hemophiliacs were knowingly given infected blood products, discussions that led to the initial development of protease inhibitors, and ACT UP Paris’s 1993 protest on World AIDS Day when a large pink condom covered the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.  Contrasting with these larger historical references are daily moments of living with HIV in this era. Members of ACT UP are shown taking AZT and DDI around the clock (including ensuring to pack water during a protest, in case of arrest, when they may need to take medication in jail), regularly attending the funerals of friends who died of AIDS, and enduring moments of homophobia from those outside of ACT UP.



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