120 Beats per minute / 120 bpm (beats per minute) - Young Creation Triennial

Show & Culture

In early 1990s France, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, the activist group Act Up intervenes in public life in many ways: obtaining better preventative support from political leaders, improving access to experimental medicines, and combating the public’s indifference to a disease still seen as only affecting "marginals"—homosexuals, transfusion recipients, prisoners, heroin users, and others. Robin Campillo offers a true group portrait inspired by his own activist experience, focusing on the journeys of certain characters. The group’s life is marked by a fierce desire to act, ongoing questions and conflicts, the urge to shake up general apathy or indifference, the energy of spectacular actions, and the deep emotion facing an illness that inevitably brings loss.