Art Historian Theo Gordon talks to artist, educator and writer Conal McStravick about their Propositions Programme, shown at BFMAF 2025.

Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms)

• Director: Stuart Marshall
• Year: 2024

Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms) is a 1983 artist’s video on the subject of AIDS, by the LGBTQ+ and AIDS video artist and TV documentarian Stuart Marshall (1949-1993). Presumed lost and unseen for almost 40 years, this 25-minute video (of the original 28 minutes) is likely to be the first AIDS activist video in the global archive.

Robert Marshall

• Director: Stuart Marshall
• Year: 1991

Robert Marshall is structured in two movements. Through the memories of his father, fragments of the son’s youth are revealed, forming both a biographical portrait of Robert and an autobiographical portrait of Stuart Marshall. The second sequence stages Marshall’s AIDS alternative health regimen of herbal and acupuncture treatments with a recording of a telephone conversation between Stuart and an HIV physician in San Francisco. The pros and cons of the drug AZT are discussed long-distance. The video offers a poignant yet politicised meditation on memory and trauma, community knowledge and medical ethics.

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