Olson, a consultant on the “Buddies” restoration, the project’s first offering, called Bressan “totally pioneering.” She and the film historian Jenni Olson are collaborating on the Bressan Project to preserve and promote the director’s work. “If I never make another movie,” he said, “‘Buddies’ will be a fine way to leave.”īut Roe Bressan, the director’s sister, said her brother didn’t know he had H.I.V. In Vito Russo’s landmark book, “The Celluloid Closet,” Bressan had a sense of his own ending.
“Buddies” was Bressan’s final film he died of AIDS complications on July 28, 1987, about eight months after he received an H.I.V. Born in 1943, he began living an openly gay life in the early 1970s, and made a name for himself in the gay porn scene with fare like “Pleasure Beach” and “Daddy Dearest.” But he also crossed over from porn in “Gay USA,” a documentary about Pride marches in 1977, and gay-themed dramas. Bressan Jr., known among friends as a sociable, sexually voracious flirt who at 6-foot-4 was a big bear of a guy. “Not just for the story it tells, but how it tells it, with great subtlety and restraint.” Mason Wells, the director of repertory programming for the Quad Cinema in New York, where “Buddies” recently had a weeklong run. This week, Vinegar Syndrome, in collaboration with the Bressan Project, released on Blu-ray/DVD Combo a new digital restoration of “Buddies.” Plans are underway to make it available for streaming next year through Frameline Distribution. 12, 1985, before going on to art-house runs in New York, Boston, Chicago and other cities. The movie made its debut at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on Sept. The film ends - no need for a spoiler alert here - with Robert’s death David, emboldened by Robert’s activist spirit, pickets the White House. Robert (Geoff Edholm), a 32-year-old gay man dying of AIDS, is visited at the hospital by David (David Schachter), a 25-year-old volunteer “buddy.” The two men develop a friendship that eventually becomes more intimate. Running 81 minutes, “Buddies” felt like a play and starred just two actors. Now, 33 years after its debut, “Buddies” is being remembered, thanks to an impassioned push by people determined not to leave behind an artifact of a painful history. An intimate two-hander from 1985, it was a snapshot of a terrible time for gay men in New York, made during some of the worst hours of the epidemic. But long forgotten is “Buddies,” the first feature film about AIDS.
“Philadelphia,” “Parting Glances,” “Longtime Companion” and “Tongues Untied” are often cited as benchmark movies about AIDS.