Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

Poster
Directed by Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Produced by Bill Couturié
Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Sandy Gallin (executive producer)
Howard Rosenman (executive producer)
Carol Baum (executive producer)
Written by Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Cindy Ruskin
Starring Dustin Hoffman (narrator)
Music by Bobby McFerrin
Edited by Rob Epstein
Jeffrey Friedman
Distributed by New Yorker Films
Release dates
  • 1989 (1989)
Country United States
Language English

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is a 1989 documentary film that tells the story of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman with a musical score written and performed by Bobby McFerrin, the film focuses on several people who are represented by panels in the Quilt, combining personal reminiscences with archive footage of the subjects, along with footage of various politicians, health professionals and other people with AIDS. Each section of the film is punctuated with statistics detailing the number of Americans diagnosed with and dead of AIDS through the early years of the epidemic. The film ends with the first display of the complete (to date) Quilt at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the 1987 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

The film, made for HBO, was based in part on the book The Quilt: Stories From The NAMES Project by Cindy Ruskin (writer), Matt Herron (photographs) and Deborah Zemke (design).

The film relates the lives of five people memorialized with panels:

Along with these personal stories, the film reviews the history of the NAMES Project and shows the process of creating quilt panels. It also documents the response - or perceived lack of it - to the onset of the AIDS epidemic by the Reagan administration through the use of archive footage of Reagan and members of his administration, the medical community's action in the face of the burgeoning health crisis, and the earliest attempts within the gay community to organize around the AIDS issue through the actions of such activists as self-proclaimed "KS poster boy" Bobbi Campbell and Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer.

Awards

Common Threads won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 1990.[1] This was the second Oscar for producer/director Rob Epstein. He had previously won for The Times of Harvey Milk, a biography of openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk. The film also won the Interfilm Award at the 1990 Berlin Film Festival, a GLAAD Media Award for Best TV Documentary, and a Peabody Award.

DVD release

Common Threads was released on Region 1 DVD on June 8, 2004.

Soundtrack

Main article: Medicine Music

Bobby McFerrin's 1990 studio album Medicine Music can easily be passed off as the soundtrack to the film, and it includes the film's theme song, "Common Threads". The album reached number 146 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.

References

External links

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