A Tender Weapon
From Oscar® nominated Executive Producer Gus Van Sant comes a short documentary portrait of Cleve Jones, aide to Harvey Milk and founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
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About
In the 1980s, Cleve Jones created the AIDS Memorial Quilt to transform mass mourning into a powerful political weapon.
Decades later, as sweeping healthcare cuts threaten millions, Cleve sets out to give private grief a public stage once again, asking whether collective pain can still force a country to act.
Unfolding in a braided, past-present structure, A TENDER WEAPON is a documentary short in progress that alternates between Cleve’s extraordinary life story—from teenage runaway to Harvey Milk’s aide to architect of one of the most innovative forms of resistance in American history—and his present-day fight to prevent millions from losing access to life-saving healthcare.
Watch the latest Oscar® shortlisted documentary from our team.
Distributed by The New Yorker magazine, CASHING OUT is an Oscar® shortlisted documentary from Matt Nadel and Luke Hodges, the co-director and producer of A TENDER WEAPON.
Praised as “vital and outstanding” (Hilton Als, The New Yorker), and “gripping… a rich, albeit macabre, historical story” (Shrai Popat, The Guardian), the film charts the rise and fall of viatical settlements — a controversial AIDS-era industry where dying gay men sold their life insurance policies to investors for quick cash.
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