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list price: $14.95
edition:Paperback
category: Performing Arts
published: Nov 2011
ISBN:9781551524221
publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

Zero Patience

A Queer Film Classic

by Susan Knabe; Wendy Gay Pearson, series edited by Thomas Waugh & Matthew Hays

tagged: history & criticism
Description

A Queer Film Classic on John Greyson's controversial 1993 film musical about the AIDS crisis which combines experimental, camp musical, and documentary aesthetics while refuting the legend of Patient Zero, the male flight attendant accused in Randy Shilts' book And the Band Played On of bringing the AIDS crisis to North America. The film features the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, who is working as a taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History in Toronto; seeking exhibits for his Hall of Contagion, Burton encounters the ghost of Patient Zero, and together, they set out to try to discover the truth about the origin of AIDS and restore Zero to life.

This book provides a guided tour of the film, looking at its engagement with both biomedical and populist discourses around AIDS in its first decade and with the political work undertaken by the queer community to provide support for HIV+ people and treatment for those with AIDS. It also delves into how Greyson, one of the most important figures in New Queer Cinema, combined experimental film aesthetics with a camp take on Hollywood genre films (both musical and horror) and the Canadian documentary film tradition while at the same time responding to Shilts' book and other discourses focused on placing blame for the AIDS crisis on an individual and a community.

Arsenal's Queer Film Classics series cover some of the most important and influential films about and by LGBTQ people.

About the Authors

Susan Knabe is an associate professor in both Media Studies and Women’s Studies at the Western University in London, Ontario. Her research covers the construction of gender and sexuality in discourses of health and disease as well as the representation of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in film and media. Her forthcoming book is titled Affective Traces: AIDS Cultural Production and the Legacy of the Holocaust.


Wendy Gay Pearson is an associate professor in the Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research at Western University in London, Ontario. Her current research project involves the impact of modes of distribution on the politics and aesthetics of Indigenous film. She is co-editing a volume on the politics of representation of Indigenous girls and women.


Thomas Waugh is a writer, programmer, and activist who taught film studies and sexuality at Concordia University from 1976 to 2017. He is the author of The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas.

Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based critic, author, and university and college instructor. His articles have appeared in a broad range of publications. His first book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press), was cited by Quill & Quire as one of the best books of 2007 and won a 2008 Lambda Literary Award. He is co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of Queer Film Classics, a series of monographs for Arsenal Pulp Press on LGBTQ films; titles in the series include Paris Is Burning, Strangers on a Train, Law of Desire, and Female Trouble. He is the film instructor at Marianopolis College, and also teaches courses in journalism, communication studies, and film studies at Concordia University, where he received the Concordia Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007 and the President's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013.

Editorial Reviews

This book offers lots of fascinating background detail and teases out the complexity of its central conceit in a way that will undoubtedly add to the viewing experience.
-Eye on Film

— Eye on Film

[Knabe and Pearson] offer through the lens of the film a concise and pointed history of the development of the AIDS crisis and the queer community's various responses to it in the 1980s and early 90s.
-Film Quarterly

— Film Quarterly

Knabe and Pearson do a stellar job summarizing the political and populist discourse about AIDS in Canada in the early years of the disease.
-Quill and Quire

— Quill and Quire

An extensive and approachable piece of work ... The authors do not simply give us a guided tour of Zero Patience or the fascinating external narrative that comes with its release. They use the opportunity for multiple discussions, whether thoughtfully and concisely exploring the history of AIDS activism and community, or generally taking on Canadian queer filmmaking and Greyson's considerable contributions to it.
-Xtra!

— Xtra!

A gripping tale ... Passionate and smart.
-Andrew Holleran, Washington Post

— Washington Post

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