A documentary video featuring the all-star cast of doctors and nurses at the UCSF Infectious Diseases HIV Clinic made its big-screen debut last Thursday (June 12) at the New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.

"The Healers of 400 Parnassus" is a moving tribute to the doctors, nurses and social workers at the UCSF HIV clinic. How they maintain their dedication and inspiration in the face of constant sickness and death is the focus of the video.

“I think part of it for me is to experience the intensity of the patients I have,” Cecily Cosby, a nurse practitioner explains in the video. “There’s a great triumph in participating in people’s lives.” But there’s also a downside. Cosby admits to having recurring nightmares in which she is infected with the disease. She also must assuage the fears of her own family members, who are concerned about her close contact with the virus.

"The Healers of 400 Parnassus" combines individual interviews with staff members with cinema verite footage of doctor-patient sessions to show HIV clinicians as part caretaker, social worker and friend.

"There have been a number of documentaries and feature films made about people living with HIV and AIDS, but there have been very few about the people that care for them," says director and producer Laura Gabbert. A former San Francisco resident, Gabbert says she fell upon the idea for the documentary almost by accident. A friend of hers who worked in the clinic told her about the "amazing people" at UCSF.

Sensing a story at hand, Gabbert volunteered in the clinic and quickly realized her hunch was correct. She shot the video in the summer of 1995 and went off to film school at UCLA with some 40 hours of tape.

The video is often sad, and sometimes difficult to watch. One scene shows nurse practitioner Susan Shea reigning-in her emotions as she suggests that a worsening patient and his partner focus on "quality time." Shea reveals in the documentary that her first brush with AIDS was back in 1984, the year she graduated from nursing school, when a friend of hers was diagnosed with the disease.

“It was very much a personal experience for me before it was a professional experience,” she says. Another scene shows the painful reality of a spinal tap.

But ultimately, says Gabbert, the documentary is meant to be uplifting.

"So much of what we've heard about doctors doing this kind of work leaves the impression that what they do is incredibly sad. But doing this kind of work doesn't have to be depressing in an all encompassing way. I think people get a lot back from giving to people, " Gabbert says.

Cosby says as much in the opening scene. "When people find out I'm a nurse practitioner in an AIDS Clinic," she begins, "they always ask, 'How can you deal with that every day?'... I think it's important that people know, we're here because there's nowhere else we'd rather be."

Also featured in the video are current and former UCSF employees: Physicians Jason Tokumoto and Steve O' Brien, triage nurse Allen Adams and social worker Jane Hawgood.

Says Shea of conducting sensitive patient sessions on camera, "It was a little jangling at first. But after an hour, I was just totally over it."

Shea attended the premier in New York last week. And while she appreciates any extra publicity the video brings to the clinic, she isn't taking her new star status too seriously. "It's a funny thing to see yourself on the screen," says Shea.

The video has been submitted at several other festivals, including the Mill Valley Film Festival, and is being marketed for television in several European countries.

By Vince Pearson

1st appeared - 6/16/97