And the Band Played On...Fifteen Years Later

And the Band Played On is a 1993 Emmy Award-winning American docudrama based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts.

The film, starring Matthew Modine as Don Francis and Alan Alda as Robert Gallo, is an extensive chronicle of the research, bureaucracy, and politics surrounding AIDS in the early 1980s. The cast also includes Ian McKellen, Lily Tomlin, B.D. Wong, Phil Collins, Steve Martin, Richard Gere, and Anjelica Huston.

Not without controversy was the characterization of Gaëtan Dugas, an Air Canada flight attendant from Quebec City identified as one of the first persons to be diagnosed with AIDS in North America. The reference to Dugas as 'Patient Zero,' in both the book and the film, however, was unfortunately misconceived as an indication that it was he who introduced HIV into North America, a myth debunked by later clarifications and studies, the most recent of which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1 November 2007.

But controversy aside, the movie is in itself a touching memorial for a time when it was feared that the AIDS epidemic would become the global pandemic it is today. The last moments of the film (below) well represent the tone of an era that seems, at once, unforgettable, yet strangely forgotten.