FIG TREES is a documentary opera about AIDS activists Tim McCaskell of Toronto and Zackie Achmat of Capetown as they fight for access to treatment drugs. Documentary interviews, speeches, press conferences and demonstrations are sampled, taken apart, and set to music, replayed this time as operatic scenes. A surreal fictional narrative is intercut with the stories of their struggles against government and the pharmaceutical industry. In this fictional world, Gertrude Stein decides to write a tragic opera about Tim and Zackie and their saint-like heroism. She kidnaps them, transports them to Niagara Falls, and forces them to sing a series of complicated avant-garde vocal compositions. However, when Zackie ends his treatment strike and starts taking his pills, Gertrude realizes that there will be no more tragedy, and thus, no more opera.

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Frequently marginalized within a community that already struggles against marginalization – that is, the gay, lesbian and bisexual community – African American transgender males make their voices heard in this film from Kortney Ryan Ziegler. Six articulate black transmen – who are also artists, students, husbands, fathers, lawyers and teachers – speak candidly about race, gender, body image and status.

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The screening of A Place to Live will be followed by a frank discussion of housing and other issues confronting LGBT elders in the Boston area. Tickets for this program are $7/$6.

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