Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, co-founders of the ACT UP Oral History Project, gave a talk about the history of direct-action AIDS activism, New York City, and Schulman’s recent book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 (Picador, 2021). The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded in 1987 and is “a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals, united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.”

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. She is the author of more than twenty works of fiction, nonfiction, and theater and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voices for Peace.

Jim Hubbard has been making films since 1974. His film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP has played at over 150 museums, universities, and film festivals worldwide. Among his 25 other films are Elegy in the Streets (1989), Two Marches (1991), The Dance (1992), and Memento Mori (1995). His films are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and have been shown at the Warhol Museum, ICA Boston, the Harvard Film Archive, Tokyo University, der Zürcher Museen, mumok (Vienna), Mudam (Luxembourg), the Berlin Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, among others.