Marina Alvarez, Ellen Spiro with Jonathan Lee, producer

December 1, 1991
Citywide
Photo © 1991 Ellen Spiro

This twenty-six minute video focused on the heroic and positive response of Latina women to the current AIDS crisis. Through community education, poetry, activism, and dance, women with AIDS challenged notions of female invisibility and complacency in the face of the epidemic. (In)Visible Women was the second project of Fear of Disclosure, a series of videos that explored the act of revealing that one is HIV seropositive or has AIDS. The video was televised with six viewing dates in Manhattan and the Bronx arranged in observation of World AIDS Day and Day Without Art in December 1991.

Additionally, in partnership with the Video Data Bank and Women Make Movies, the Fear of Disclosure project advocated the distribution of (In)Visible Women to Hispanic and Latino communities, women’s organizations, AIDS care and service providers, prisons, and the general public. Copies of the tape were given to hospitals, women’s centers, community agencies, libraries, universities, private foundations, and other artists nationwide. Through Transit Media, English and Spanish order forms were disseminated to individuals and community groups who had ordered AIDS-related videos in the past.

(In)Visible Women won the Best Video Award at the San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in June 1992 and was screened at the World AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, where Marina Alvarez spoke at the opening plenary session on women and AIDS. A special showing of (In)Visible Women took place in October 1992, as part of the Commissioner’s Forum on Women and AIDS, presented under the auspices of the Community Development Agency of New York, for an audience of hundreds of community-based organizations serving low-income populations in New York City.

Special thanks to Arthur Williams, The Tape House, and Women Make Movies. In remembrance of Phil Zwickler, Iris De La Cruz, and Irma Luz Nieves.