The writer and gay activist LARRY KRAMER is to be honoured by Gay Men’s Health Crisis the volunteer AIDS Organisation he helped found in 1981.
Disagreement caused by Kramer’s confrontational style however led to his resignation, and he left to then help set up ACT UP as a more direct action alternative. The whole traumatic period was dramatized by Kramer in his award winning play THE NORMAL HEART that was adapted into a movie last year.
Mr Kramer, now in very frail health, has been named the first recipient of the LARRY KRAMER ACTIVISM AWARD which GMHC has established to recognise advocates who reflect Kramer’s ‘spirit, passion and fearlessness’. GMHC co-chair Roberta Kaplan also added that its also an attempt ‘to bring a sense of closure and healing’ between Kramer and the group.
80-year-old Mr Kramer is also the subject of the first ever documentary of his life ‘LARRY KRAMER : IN LOVE AND ANGER’ that premiered at Sundance recently, and will be screened on HBO in the US in June and on UK TV later this year. Here’s a clip of director Jean Carlomusto discussing the film and working with the great man.