Act up or chaos

by Pierre Chassagnieux > Matthew Lère
France • 2025 • 1h00
Documentary

In 2024, Act Up-Paris, the anti-AIDS activist association from the French homosexual community, was 35 years old. Throughout her history, she has invented a new way – provocative and radical – to militate, remove the HIV-positive and gay community from invisibility and save countless lives. Based on unpublished archives and on the exceptional participation of those who have marked the life of the association – Pascal Loubet, Didier Lestrade, Anne Rousseau, Philippe Mangeot, Hugues Charbonneau or Lalla Kowska Régnier – this documentary gives a comprehensive story retracing the story both terrible and magnificent of Act Up-Paris.

The film will be followed by an exchange with the directors and Didier Lestrade

Didier Lestrade
A writer, journalist and co-founder of Act Up-Paris, he signed one of the most important pages of French activism as a major figure in the lgbtqia+ movement. Very early on, a taste for gay aesthetics and dance music, working with the homosexual press and Libération. The AIDS epidemic hit him in 1986, and he co-founded in 1989, with his friends Pascal Loubet and Luc Coulavin, Act Up-Paris, inspired by the American model born two years earlier. Rescapé, Didier Lestrade is now installed in the countryside, where he simply lives, advocating the decline and writing books.

[À SUIVRE] Didier Lestrade will sign his last book, Mémoires 1958-2024 (Stock, 2025), Monday, April 21 at 6 p.m. at the Bookshop Les Parleuses.