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Bright Eyes

Stuart Marshall

1986 01:19:00 United KingdomEnglishColor

Description

Produced for Britain’s Channel 4, Bright Eyes is an impressive and complex essay detailing the various factors that have colluded to misrepresent the true nature of the threat posed by AIDS. Exposing the relationship between the mass media, scientific systems of classification, and definitions of pathology, Marshall pinpoints the construction of sexual politics based on a reactionary morality. The video places the AIDS crisis in the context of the historical persecution of homosexuals and focuses on the efforts of gay activist groups to combat social and medical prejudice.

About Stuart Marshall

Stuart Marshall was an educator, writer, and independent film- and videomaker.  His work focuses on the historical and political construction of homosexual identity as a deviant, “outsider” category, positioning the homosexual as the catch-all “bogeyman” of societal fears and conformist pressure. His documentary Bright Eyes is a similarly complex and unique study of the pathology of fear and manipulation surrounding the AIDS crisis.  Striving to educate broad audiences on issues of grave social importance, Marshall’s work makes the most of alternative media’s power to counteract the “objectivity” of dominant media, supplying viewers with additional viewpoints and facts that television news conveniently edits out.  Formally, Marshall’s approach to documentary also places him firmly outside the typical news organization, as he includes interview subjects in his creative process.  Marshall died of an AIDS-related illness in 1993.