Alumnus Nick Aquilino Struggles to Find Funding for Documentary on AIDS Vigil

METRO WEEKLY -- The AIDS Vigil has been mostly forgotten to the history books and the fading recollections of participants. Four years ago, an effort was launched to erect a plaque or monument to commemorate the protest and its participants, but nothing has come of it. And a filmmaker — who, as a graduate student in San Francisco State University’s broadcasting program in the mid-1980s, was part of a small crew who interviewed several vigil participants — had tried to pull together a documentary in time to screen October 27, to mark the 30th anniversary of the start of the vigil. But he has struggled to line up financing to make the film, titled “Not With Standing,” and is unsure if it will ever get made. “The reaction is always, ‘There is no AIDS crisis anymore.’ Nobody cares about AIDS,” Nick Aquilino said. With a film about the 1969 Stonewall protests released this fall, Aquilino remains dumbfounded as to why the years-long demonstration fails to spark similar interest.