Please fill out the following form to get access to free digital access to the video. Let us know how you will watch (online or in person), and the number of viewers (including just one, you, or more). The other info is optional. If you are ordering for an institution, or paid event, please indicate that on the form, and we will get back to you about rental fees (on a sliding scale).

Why this approach to sharing and distribution? It asks you to take a breath and consider what it means to hold, watch, or engage with another’s digital trace: mine, yes, but more critically, the deathbed/legacy videos that I shot on the request of two of the most important people in my life: James Robert Lamb and Juanita Mohammed Szcepanski.

The form and this page invite you to approach watching the video with the time and space you need to attend to its commitments to community, conversation, legacy, memory, and mourning. Ideally, you could watch the tape with another viewer or viewers.

If you are screening with others, think about doing so in a place that might honor the legacy of people who have been lost to AIDS and other illnesses, as well as places that help us remember: a library or archive or bookstore; a queer bar or club; a feminist, queer, or trans community center; a classroom or community-based screening room.

If you are watching on your own, particularly on a computer or other small digital screen, consider in advance what related viewing conditions might help you to honor the video’s and its subjects’ commitments to community-based dialogue, trust, and responsibility.

When you are done, take a look at the suggested themes and questions. Talk together when you are ready! After that, we’d love to hear or learn more about your screening. You can upload images, thoughts, responses, or questions here. And, you can post online with #pleasehold.

1. Engage with the tape, and its legacies of activism and trust within AIDS communities, by sharing something from or about your screening and adding it to our online collection: a photo, some writing, a video, something that you have kept for another.
2. Donate to the project to help support the costs of community-based installations.