In 1987, as the death count mounted for New York’s gay community, Senator Jesse Helms blamed the victims for their disease and President Reagan refused to speak the disease’s name—let alone launch a national policy to address it. Into this void came an activist force called ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). This take-no-prisoners group agitated on every front to find a cure: from noisy rallies outside the National Institutes of Health to becoming experts on human physiology and drug testing. This landmark film taps into a motherlode of archival video footage from the ’80s and celebrates a little-told triumph of activism: how a few charismatic activists, plus some less-showy pharmaceutical researchers, endeavored to end a crisis. Rigorously journalistic yet intimate and cathartic, How to Survive brings its subject and its epoch to life more than any other film before it. (PS)