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He hopes that message comes through in the film. But Hammond said that telling the story of Fraternity House, where hundreds of patients found a new, loving family of caregivers and a peaceful death sparked his own healing. And that was on top of his own grief over his father’s death from Parkinson’s disease in December. Hammond said he and his crew often cried during the filming. Many of the stories in the film are devastatingly sad.
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With no treatment available, virtually all of the men, and some women, died within months of diagnosis. Many were ostracized, hounded by conservative church leaders and either targeted or ignored by politicians. San Diego AIDS Walk founder Susan Jester describes the ‘80s as a gay holocaust that killed 265 of her friends.īack then, most gay people were closeted, so admitting they were sick also meant coming out to their families and co-workers. Now that AIDS is a manageable disease with proper medication, the organization’s goal is to rehabilitate vulnerable AIDS patients, including the homeless, disabled and seniors.Ī good portion of the film recounts how AIDS swept into San Diego in 1982, destroying the city’s then-vibrant Hillcrest community of more than 43 gay-themed dance clubs, restaurants, bars and businesses. The organization also now also operates Michaelle House in Vista.
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Over the years, angry neighbors drove Fraternity House out of Oceanside, and then Escondido, but it eventually found a permanent home on county-owned land in Elfin Forest. When volunteers asked Beierle what to tell neighbors when they saw a large number of men living together in the house, he told them tell others it was a fraternity house. In the mid-1980s, much of the public feared and reviled AIDS patients, so it operated incognito. When he saw that many of his patients had been abandoned by their families and could no longer care for themselves, he rented a house in Oceanside, filled it with 11 beds and recruited volunteers, meager supplies and donations to keep it going. “I stand in front of it and take a deep breath, re-center and know why I’m here,” she says in the film.įraternity House was started on a shoestring in 1985 by Ray Beierle, a nurse’s aide working double-shifts treating young men dying of AIDS. Now it’s a place where they can come to rehabilitate.’” “I had thought it was a rehab place, and I looked at the lady there and said, ‘Where am I?’ She said very gently, ‘This is a place where gay people came to die from AIDS. “I walked in and was hit with all these emotions: mysterious, loving and sad,” Hammond said. The latter is what he was hired to do last spring when he first visited Fraternity House in Elfin Forest.
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“Expect a Miracle” is Hammond’s second documentary for the KPBS series “Explore San Diego,” following last year’s “ Très Bíen: The Big Heart Of The Big Kitchen.” The 46-year-old filmmaker splits his time between making documentaries and short films, making videos for local theaters and creating grant-making videos for local nonprofits. Fraternity House lives on today, but now it’s a place where men and women with AIDS go to live a longer life. The hourlong film also spotlights Fraternity House, a hospice that opened in North County in the mid-'80s as a refuge for men dying of AIDS. Tuesday on KPBS television, tells the story of how San Diego’s gay community was ravaged by AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. “ Expect a Miracle: Finding Light in the Darkness of a Pandemic,” which premieres at 9 p.m. It’s been a hard time emotionally for the Del Mar resident but a creative period personally as he debuts a new documentary about hope and healing in a deadly pandemic that struck San Diego nearly 40 years ago. Then the pandemic struck and wiped out much of his income as a freelance filmmaker. Be part of the team.Six months ago, Jonathan Hammond’s father died. Post it! All content here is user-generated. Want to see more of something on /r/gaymers? Don't be a consumer, be a producer. We do not currently allow Discord advertising and links. Self-pic posts that are not text-accompanied go here: /r/GaymersGoneMild This is a community-based subreddit NOT solely dedicated to discussing gay themes in gaming. We host frequent voice and/or video chat nights, regularly play multi-player games together, talk about how totally rugged David Hayter is, how sexy Samus is in her zero suit, talk about how we love big Switch sessions, and playing with an XBox all night long.Įxpect to be offended by something you see here at least once. Gaymers is a community for LGBT and ally redditors.