A Virus Knows No Morals

Co-presented with The Baffler

An AIDS comedy? From 1986? Prolific queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim crafts an episodic, parodic, and offbeat Brechtian skewering of the greedy, vicious German response to a brand-new AIDS crisis. Originally Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky, Von Praunheim named himself “Rosa” after the pink triangle that queer men were forced to wear in concentration camps. His 1971 film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives helped to ignite the German and Swiss gay and lesbian liberation movement. 

A Virus Knows No Morals will be followed by a discussion led by Jeff Weinstein, who dives into the continuing sad and infuriating story of queer-hating, money-only healthcare and the cultural response to AIDS in the article “Sex and Drugs,” his contribution to The Baffler’s latest issue, “Life Alert.”