Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 14, 1993 TAG: 9308250341
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Make no mistake, ``Silverlake Life: The View from Here'' isn't always a pretty one. For two hours, you watch a video diary of two men afflicted with AIDS.
But this extraordinary film, airing Tuesday at 10 p.m. (on WBRA-Channel 15), is much more than a cinematic death knell.
Let filmmaker Peter Friedman explain.
``For many people who know about it but haven't seen it,'' he says, ``this film seems to exist solely as a difficult film about how horrible it is to have AIDS. I'm not interested in downplaying that, but the film is not a lurid piece of sensationalism, or a grueling experience to go through.
It's something else, and people tell me it's worth it.''
Worth it and then some, as the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival suggests. And a worthy choice to launch the sixth season of ``P.O.V.'' (as in ``point of view''), a weekly series that will bring to television this summer a dozen independently produced nonfiction films.
Here's the ``Silverlake'' back story: Friedman, now 34, studied at Massachusetts' Hampshire College with filmmaker Tom Joslin. The young man became his protege, and remained friends with both Joslin and his companion Mark Massi even after the couple moved across the country to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake.
``Spiritually and aesthetically, they were like my gay parents,'' Friedman says.
Joslin's Super VHS camcorder had always been part of the household, and even after he and Massi were diagnosed with AIDS, he continued to record their day-to-day life.
Joslin didn't live to finish his final project, but 40 hours of footage that survived him became the raw material Friedman spent more than a year transforming into ``Silverlake Life.''
The finished product is a heart-rending film. How could it not be, chronicling the loss of a loved one and the end of a 22-year love affair? But there is no sentimentalizing here. Remarkably few tears. Precious little rage. Only trace elements of bitterness and self-pity. And a noble measure of wry humor, and even hope.
Overall, the tone is not morbid, but matter-of-fact, as when a wistful Joslin reflects, ``I'm not much of a participant in life anymore. I'm a distant viewer, just watching it all pass by, knowing that I'm not going to have that much longer to keep my eye on the prize.''
A few weeks later - 19 minutes in film time - the 43-year-old Joslin is dead. (Massi would die a year later, in July 1991.)
Friedman recalls that when he took on the project in late 1991, ``I had to get over this feeling of: What would Tom have done?''
Only when he resolved to make his own film, not Joslin's, did Friedman free himself.
``This film gave me the opportunity to say something about AIDS, and I knew I was creating the most comprehensive, in-depth view of it that a lot of people would ever have. That was more daunting than any responsibility I had to Tom.
``AIDS has surrounded me in my personal life for years now,'' Friedman says evenly. ``I had a very close friend die just two weeks ago. With the film I want people to get to know somebody suffering from AIDS. This culture doesn't care enough about AIDS because, even now, many people still feel a safe distance from it. I want them to learn how that distance is an illusion.''
For those privileged to witness ``Silverlake Life,'' the illusion will be shattered forever.
by CNB