NYC LGBT Screens ACT UP! Film with Nathan Lane, Joel Grey, et al., 5/25

This evening, Wednesday, May 25, 2011, Christine Vachon (Producer, Far From Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), fashion guru and author Carson Kressley of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, talk show host Phil Donahue, food critic and Chopped host Ted Allen, and openly-gay and HIV-positive New York State Senator Tom Duane will host a cocktail reception and preview screening from 6:30-8:30 PM at New York City's LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street (between 7th & Greenwich Avenues) in Manhattan to raise funds for ACT UP!, a documentary film currently in production with the expectation of premiering at Sundance 2012, followed by wide theatrical release and television broadcast.

The film features footage with Sarah Jessica Parker, Nathan Lane, George C. Wolfe, Larry Kramer, Melissa Etheridge, Christine Vachon, Joel Grey, Richard Chamberlain, Daryl Roth, and Ellen Barkin.

Assembled from hundreds of hours of historic footage and contemporary interviews, the film traces the history of ACT UP - the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power - a group of New Yorkers who mobilized when municipal, state and federal government all turned a blind eye as their friends, families and loved ones were being decimated by a then-untreatable disease.

By drawing on extensive archives of footage filmed on handheld cameras by video activists, the film captures the dynamic energy of protest. You are there as demonstrators aggressively take their fight to jar public awareness into the majestic halls of Grand Central Station, onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and directly to the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA in Washington.

A portion of the proceeds from the fundraiser will benefit AIDS organizations worldwide through a collaborative partnership with UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos