Rosa von Praunheim’s A Virus Knows No Morals

BAM and The Baffler are pleased to present the following screening and discussion of Rosa von Praunheim’s 1986 film A Virus Knows No Morals.

An AIDS comedy? From 1986? Prolific queer filmmaker Von Praunheim crafts an episodic, parodic, and offbeat Brechtian skewering of the greedy, vicious German response to a brand-new AIDS crisis in A Virus Knows No Morals. Originally Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky, Von Praunheim named himself “Rosa” after the pink triangle that queer men were forced to wear in concentration camps. His 1971 film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives helped to ignite the German and Swiss gay and lesbian liberation movement.

A Virus Knows No Morals will be followed by a discussion with Jeff Weinstein, who dives into the continuing sad and infuriating story of queer-hating, money-only health care and the cultural response to AIDS in the article “Sex and Drugs,” his contribution to our latest issue, “Life Alert.”

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Rosa von Praunheim
A Virus Knows No Morals
1986, 84 min, DCP