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A Virus Knows No Morals
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Wikipedia article
'A Virus Knows No Morals' is a 1986 German film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. It was one of the first feature films about AIDS worldwide.
The film also received much attention abroad and is still screened today. 'A Virus Knows No Morals' premiered at the 1986 Berlin International Film Festival and was also shown, for example, at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the same year.
Plot
A group of contrasting characters share one thing in common: they all have to do with the subject of AIDS. There is Rdiger, a conservative gay man who runs a sex sauna. Christian, a devout man who sacrificially cares for his partner who has AIDS. A curious blood doctor who tries to find out the origin of HIV and shares the positive test results with her patients, not without gloating. A reporter disguised as a man tries to spy on the gay scene ... Finally, the government decides to isolate the infected people on the island of Helgoland in order to contain the epidemic. But the outcasts put up a brave fight.
Reception
"'A Virus Respects No Morals', a savage, imaginative, scattershot Brecht-like allegory set largely in a gay bath, became one of the earliest and most provocative attacks on the hypocrisy, ignorance, politics and economics surrounding the AIDS crisis." (Los Angeles Times) The renowned critic Jerry Tallmer, founder of the Obie Award, wrote in the newspaper The Record: "[...] Rosa (originally Holger) von Praunheim, the brilliant, acerbic director of such breakthrough gay-revolutionist works as 'Silence = Death' and 'A Virus Knows No Morals'."
Notes
References
*Murray, Raymond. 'Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Guide'. TLA Publications, 1994,
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