Documentary Films: Witness of the Real
Nancy Hatch Dupree, the founder of the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU), has created an archive that has more than 45,000 documents she began collecting in the 1970’s, with her late husband, Louis. Continue reading “Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University: Building a School Library”
Ishmael Beah talks to New York City high school kids about his memoir, A Long Way Gone, about his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.
Four Columbia Business School students consulted with hotel owner and Dar es Salaam entrepreneurs, Joseph and Damasi Mfugale, on how to build their Peacock Hotel chain, from three-stars into a five-star hotel.
Released: 1996
Length: 45 minutes
Director: Jay Corcoran
Cast: Tom McBride
This striking documentary by filmmaker Jay Corcoran, details the life and death of Tom McBride, a New York actor and model dying of Progressive Multi-focal Leucoencephalopathy (PML), an AIDS-related brain disease.
Trailer: Life and Death on the A-List
McBride’s “All-American” good looks made him a familiar face in television commercials, print ads and films through the ’70s and ’80s. He even became that most emblematic of masculine images: the Winston man. For many gay men, McBride became an icon exemplifying life on the “A-List” — the whirl of sex, drugs, theme parties, and summers on Fire Island that made New York’s gay scene famous. But McBride’s glamorous life was stalked by his sexual obsession and compulsive drive.
Corcoran’s film takes an unsparing look at one man’s relationship to his beautiful body and how he copes with its disintegration. More profoundly, LIFE AND DEATH ON THE A-LIST is about us: our bodies, our fantasies, our dreams of sexual fulfillment. Tom McBride is a fallible, tragic hero pointing the way to a more humane vision of how we all — gay and straight — might view our lives, bodies, and the endless possibilities of life.
Co-owner Julie Flakstad and others talk about the secret of Blow’s success.
First published in NYC24, The Hijinks Issue, 2008.
By Jay Corcoran
April Fool’s Day at Think Coffee, New York City.
Mildred Verrier was worried.
One night last week she planned to roller skate at her place of employment, Think Coffee, while dressed in her underpants and other accessories while playing the ukulele.
“The singing and nudity didn’t bother me,” said Verrier a coffee barista-singer, “it’s the roller stakes, I never did it before.”
Continue reading “Think Coffee”
Released: 2001
Length: 56 minutes
Producer: Jay Corcoran
Executive producer: Michael Roberts
Cinematographer: Jay Corcoran
Editor: George O’Donnell
Composer: Scott Killian
Undetectable is a feature documentary, following for three years six Boston residents on the new multi-drug therapies for HIV disease. The film examines the complex physical and psychological effects of the treatment on three women and three men of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and the importance of AIDS education and advocacy within both the gay and poor and minority communities. It was broadcast on PBS, Independent Lens.
Continue reading “Undetectable: The New Face of AIDS”