Crew Bios
Alexandra Juhasz
Producer/Director/Image and Sound
Dr. Juhasz is Distinguished Professor of the Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Alex is the producer of the feature films The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010).
She has directed the feature documentaries SCALE: Measuring Might in the Media Age (2008), Video Remains (2005), Dear Gabe (2003), Women of Vision: 18 Histories in Feminist Film and Video (1998), and the shorts RELEASED: 5 Short Videos about Women and Prison (2000) and Naming Prairie (2001), a Sundance Film Festival, 2002, official selection. All played in festivals and enjoyed community-based distribution.
She is the author of AIDS TV (Duke, 1995), AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, with Jih-Fei Cheng and Nishant Shahani (Duke, 2020), We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, with Theodore Kerr (Duke University Press, 2022), and scores of articles and videos about AIDS.
Matt Hittle
Editor
Matt is a video editor and artist based in Indianapolis. He holds a B.A. in Film Production from Brooklyn College, City University of New York (2020). He has a diverse portfolio spanning advertising, music videos, and short films. His recent focus centers on local nonprofit and activist media initiatives promoting positive pregnancy outcomes for birthing individuals by addressing the maternal and infant health crisis in Indiana.
He edited the podcast “We Need Gentle Truths for Now” (directed and produced by Alexandra Juhasz), the short video Against Story (directed and produced by Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, 2019), and the short video I Want to Leave a Legacy: The video/activism of Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (2022).
Paul Hill
Sound mix and Editing
Paul is an award-winning filmmaker, editor and sound mixer. He joined the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio Program in 1996 where he works in post-production with world renowned filmmakers and video artists on a wide range of projects from documentaries to multi channel video installations. Through the Film/Video Studio Program Paul has worked on hundreds of projects from filmmakers and video artists including Sadie Benning, Jennifer Reeder, Barbara Hammer, Shimon Attie, Lynne Sachs, Penny Lane, Sam Green and many others.
He was an editor for The Brandon Teena Story, which won Best Documentary awards at several festivals, including the Berlin and Toronto International Film Festivals. In 2003 Paul directed and edited Myth of Father, an award-winning documentary about his transgendered father. The film is distributed by Frameline Distribution and is available on amazon.com. In 2015 he co-directed and edited Cincinnati Goddamn, a feature length documentary about racial profiling and police brutality in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is currently being screened at film festivals and museums across the country.
Cast Bios
Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski
(1957–2022)
Juanita was a prolific AIDS activist videomaker and an active member of WAVE, The Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, in 1989. She produced numerous videos for Gay Men’s Health Crisis’ “Living With AIDS” television program, including the segment Two Men and a Baby. She was the mother of the House of Moshood, part of the ball community. She spoke and volunteered at community group venues, LGBT community centers, public libraries, museums, and schools.
After her retirement from New York City Human Resources as a HIV/AIDS caseworker, her production company Diversity Video Productions, run with her husband Henry Szczepanski, produced videos on issues dealing with AIDS, homelessness, disability, and youth.
Jih-Fei Cheng
Dr. Cheng is Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Scripps College.
Previously, he worked in HIV/AIDS social services, managed a university cultural center, and has been involved in arts and media production and curation. He has participated as a board or steering committee member for various queer and trans of color community-based organizations in Los Angeles and New York City, such as the Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment! (FIERCE!) and the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York.
His organizing work has addressed the issues of queer and transgender health, immigration, gentrification and youth homelessness, police harassment and brutality, and prison abolition. Cheng’s research examines the intersections between science, media, surveillance, and social movements. He is co-editor with Alexandra Juhasz and Nishant Shahani of AIDS and the Distribution of Crises (Duke UP 2020).
Marty Fink
Dr. Fink (he/they) is an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Fink is the author of Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (Rutgers UP; Lambda finalist in LGBTQ non-fiction, 2020) which investigates HIV activism past and present through the lens of caregiving. Fink’s forthcoming research finds parallels between the historical invention of safer sex by queer/trans communities and contemporary responses to COVID to map trans desires and sexual practices across pandemics. Fink’s academic and activist projects strive to widen the scope of trans care toward prison abolition and a free Palestine.
Pato Hebert
Pato Hebert is an artist, teacher, and organizer.
His work probes the challenges and possibilities of interconnectedness. He works across a wide range of media including photography, sculpture, installation, text, design and performance. Hebert has worked in HIV initiatives with queer communities of color since 1994. These grassroots efforts at local and transnational levels engage social movements and community organizations to develop innovative approaches to HIV mobilization, programs and justice. He is also a COVID-19 long hauler, living with the ongoing impacts of the coronavirus since March of 2020 and publicly addressing the pandemic through creativity and community building.
Theodore (Ted) Kerr
Ted is an educator, writer, and organizer.
He is the co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2022, with Alexandra Juhasz). He curated the 2021 exhibition “AIDS, Posters and Stories of Public Health: A People’s Pandemic” for the National Libraries of Medicine. He was one of four oral historians who worked on “Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project” for the Smithsonian archives for American Art in 2017/2018. He is an adjunct instructor at The New School and Manhattan College offering classes on sociology, HIV, literature, and more.
Elizabeth Koke
Writer, performer, and activist.
Elizabeth Koke has worked in HIV/AIDS advocacy and services for the past 10 years. Over the years she has graced stages at Dixon Place, The Greene Space, Wild Project, Brooklyn Museum, and various dive bars and backyards. She currently works for Housing Works and is a regular at the Parkside Lounge.
