When Puerto Rican filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s mother was clearing her garage out in 2008 she called her daughter and asked if she would be interested in a box of decaying 8mm home movies and several hundred slides that she had just uncovered. Little did she know then when she agreed to take the box did she ever imagine the journey she would undertake once she had examined its contents.
It started Aldarondo out on a quest to discover more about the life of her Uncle Miquel who had died of AIDS some twenty five years previously, and about which her conservative religious family had always been very tight-lipped about.
Aldarondo’s heart-breaking and compelling documentary is a passionate memoir to the Uncle that she should barely remember from her childhood. It was a tough job being so close to all the players involved, and getting to know ‘Robert’ after all these years, but she did it in a manner that should at least bring some sort of peace finally to all those involved who are still living.
We lost so many wonderful men and women in our community through this very dark passage of our history, and it is so essential that their stories are told too.
Now this remarkable and totally unmissable film will have its national TV premiere on PBS’s POV series on Monday 31st July : check your local station for timings.
P.S. Read queerguru’s full review of the movie HERE
