World Aids Day: Over Our Dead Bodies + Q&A
London Community Video Archive in association with Club des Femmes presents: Over Our Dead Bodies - World Aids Day Screening + Q&A with Sunil Gupta and Kell w Farshéa.
LCVA in association with Club des Femmes celebrate World Aids Day with a afternoon of rarely screened works that explore how Britain’s gay community used video as a medium for visibility, protest, and survival during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. At a time when government inaction and media hostility fuelled stigma and silence, queer filmmakers and activists turned to video technologies to document their anger, grief, and resistance, creating a vital record of community self-representation.
The programme brings together a range of voices and visual strategies. Newly acquired OutRage! tapes offer raw, on-the-ground footage of protests and community organising, capturing the urgency of activist responses to social and political neglect. Alongside these sit a rare screening of Sunil Gupta’s artist film, Cock Crazy or Scared Stiff (1992) and 21st Century Nuns (1994), which explores the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Derek Jarman.
The feature presentation is Stuart Marshall’s Channel 4 film Over Our Dead Bodies (1991), situating the AIDS crisis within broader networks of queer activism across the UK and US. Blending documentary, testimony, and media analysis, the film traces the rise of activist movements such as ACT UP, Queer Nation, and OutRage!, while interrogating questions of democracy, representation, and the politics of anger within those movements.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kell w Farshéa, original ACT UP activist and member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and artist and activist Sunil Gupta, reflecting on the legacies of queer activism, art, and community media in shaping public understanding of the AIDS crisis and its ongoing resonance today.
LCVA profits to this screening will be donated to LoveTank's PrEPster's campaign page for the 2025 World AIDS Day Red Run.