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Celluloid Sunday: Zero Patience on 35mm
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Three named men standing and posing in song at a public shower. They look like they're on stage in a musical
Zero Patience, dir. John Greyson, Canada 1993, 97 min., English, 18

Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as a taxidermist at the Toronto Natural History Museum, is doing research on ‘Patient Zero’, a gay flight attendant who allegedly brought HIV to North America. Meanwhile, the ghost of Patient Zero materializes and in a comedy of errors, encounters Burton. They fall in love and attempt to figure out what to do about the scientist's past attempts to defame Patient Zero as a "sexual serial killer".

Directed by gay activist and figure of the Toronto New Wave John Greyson (Lilies),  Zero Patience delivers a bold critique of the stigma surrounding the origins of HIV and of the myth of the patient zero, less than a decade after the death of Gaëtan Dugas, an early HIV patient long regarded as the primary US case.

Celluloid Sunday is a series of screenings showing on original format from the ICA Archive.
 

All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.

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