The Reverend Canon Marie A. Tatro watched Please Hold on her computer with hopes of potentially screening it as part of her community justice ministry. She wrote this summary for her colleagues recommending the documentary for a screening at their church.
Hi, I said I would write up a summary of “Please Hold,” since you are both so busy, and wanted to get a sense of it before making a decision, so here it is.
On the surface, “Please Hold” is about the AIDS Movement in the 1980’s, with a focus on two people who the filmmaker, Alexandra Juhasz, loved very much. Jim was her best friend from college, and Juanita was someone with whom she collaborated in her AIDS activism during the epidemic’s early days, particularly its impact on women of color. But that’s just a kind of a “plot” description.
On a deeper level, the film is about grief, how we are still living with those who aren’t here, how we continue to carry them with us, and how place holds a memory; in particular, the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The “main characters” from her decades-old footage are obviously Jim, Juanita, to some extent Alex herself (both the younger and older Alex), and a number of different present-day AIDS activists and scholars in conversation with her. But the LES itself is also one of the characters, which I found very compelling, especially as someone who lived there myself in the early 1980’s. All NYC neighborhoods have changed in the past 40 years, but perhaps none more dramatically than that one. The “outsider”/queer culture of the LES of the 80’s is also a thread-line running throughout.
There are parallels drawn — especially in conversations with Juanita, who also struggled with diabetes — between AIDS and some of today’s health issues: long COVID, ableism, and how people with disabilities approach love, death, sex, etc.
By way of background, Alex is the child of Holocaust survivors and very rooted in her own Jewish heritage. She is also an atheist. None of this is part of the film, but I was struck by how a thread of pastoral care runs through the entire film. She speaks of our “obligations to the dead” (including to the “ghosts we’ve never met”). Her visits to Juanita and her widower in their care facility were reminiscent to me of scenarios from my pastoral care class in seminary, or verbatims I wrote up in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), a three-month unit of hospital chaplaincy required for ordination.
The present-day AIDS activists with whom she speaks share powerful nuggets of wisdom throughout the film. She draws them out beautifully, and together they seek to create a “holding space” for our memories, another aspect of this piece that reminded me of CPE.
Alex also touches on what it’s like for young people today, who weren’t there (weren’t even born yet), and how the shadow of that epidemic lingers. How did AIDS, and the AIDS Movement, influence the trajectory of their lives, especially their understanding of their own sexuality and gender? This would seem to be a very ripe area for the Q&A after the film.
The film ends with the sound of a performance artist, CHRISTEENE, singing “In Remembrance” during the rolling of credits. (This is not addressed in the film itself, but Christeene is a persona the artist created. Alex described that persona to me as someone “destroyed by a Roman Catholic upbringing. Angry. Vulnerable.” The song lyrics clearly evoke Christian themes.)
Some nuts-and-bolts: the film is 70 minutes. There is a little bit of repetition, but for me it was helpful, even necessary, to close different time-loops, since the film toggles from present, to past, and back again. It’s not a “typical” documentary with a linear narrative. There is no nudity, but there are a few discussions of sex and references to porn, but they are mostly just in the context of “sex-positive” ideals. In my opinion, this would be appropriate for all ages, but of course with varying levels of understanding of what’s actually being discussed.
Other than the nuts-and-bolts and my very basic description in the first paragraph, these are just my takeaways. Others may see completely different things, which I think is what most artists want anyway. But because of my closeness to three of the subjects —Alex, Jim, and the LES of the 80’s— I recognize that my observations are influenced by that.
The Rev. Canon Marie A. Tatro (she/any)
Canon for Community Justice Ministry
Episcopal Diocese of Long Island
Priest Associate, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity,
Pro-Cathedral of the EDLI, Brooklyn, NY