'Fathers' Is A New Web Series Imagining A Queer Utopia Where AIDS Never Existed

The new web series Fathers, from Mexican immigrant filmmaker Leo Herrera, examines a fictional queer utopia called 'The Stonewall Colonies' in an alternate timeline where the AIDS crisis never happened.

It's a beautiful concept and envisions a world almost heartbreakingly happy, where gay people are running for president, free of discrimination and sickness and able to live their truths completely across the country.

Herrera is known for his groundbreaking, viral films about sex and politics, like "Fifty Years of Faggotry in Five Minutes" and "Blood Mirror: A Protest Against the FDA Ban on Gay Men's Blood." For Fathers, he consulted with a team of collaborators, including historians from the GLBT Historical Society, survivors, friends, lovers and family of the men featured to make sure the series was historically accurate and sensitive.

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Future episodes will will deal heavily with "the election and presidency of gay president Vito Russo (the real AIDS activist who was killed by the disease in 1990), and will be a direct reflection on the political climate today. They will also deal with the plight of gay seniors and the sexuality of modern queer culture."

Herrera explains in his artist statement: "Now more than ever, we need images of Utopia, to remember what we can strive to be and where we've been. Watching the scenes at the border unfold has reminded me of growing up 'illegal' in Arizona, and all of the darker times in America. This kind of art is needed now more than ever."

Support funding of the project here, and watch the first episode below: