In the 1980's and early 1990's, the cultural consciousness surrounding HIV/AIDS was littered with myths, misconceptions and outright lies. The confusion wasn't helped by books like And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts. In it, Shilts promoted the "Patient Zero" theory that HIV came to North America through the promiscuity of a single, gay flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. This theory came out of a single cluster study that was riddled with flimsy science and anti-gay prejudice. The book came out in 1987. By 1993, a film maker and erstwhile activist named John Greyson put together a fun, informative and delightfully campy movie called Zero Patience with the help of just about every major film organization in Canada.

Zero Patience is a surreal musical in the tradition of New Queer Cinema. In the late-80's through the mid-90's there was a surge of innovative and often controversial films that eschewed innuendo in favor of directly addressing themes relevant to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Zero Patience uses the movement's arch sense of humor to put the myths about HIV in sharp relief. By putting everything in such absurd context, the myths themselves seem all the more silly and contrived.

The premise of Zero Patience is that Zero, a thinly-veiled reference to Gaetan Dugas, dies of AIDS and returns as a ghost. The only person who can see him is none other than Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian pseudo-scientist, who in this story accidentally got mixed up with the Fountain of Youth, allowing him to continue his studies into the late 20th century. In the film, Burton is a curator at a Natural History Museum and he decides to create an exhibit tracing the false history of HIV, ranging from the "monkey" myth to a video display about Zero.

While Zero tries to piece together the mystery of his return to earth, the story visits with his friends and associates from life. Among them are an old lover who is battling HIV-related illnesses and a friend who now heads up an HIV/AIDS education and awareness political group. Their experiences put a full, human face on a messy political problem that should have been a health concern instead.

While some of the songs in Zero Patience are simply there for fun, most of them focus on disseminating solid medical facts about HIV and highlighting the emotional complexity of what it's like to have the condition. The low-budget feel and the educational bent of the film keeps it from being a work of high art, but given its time and its purpose it is a real accomplishment.

While LGBT culture has become somewhat more mainstream in the 21st century, much of its art is still fairly underground. It would be a controversy to try to release Zero Patience in 2009. The fact that it saw the light of day in 1993 is astounding. Thanks to our neighbors to the north and their more lenient view of censorship, a truly unique film about the HIV/AIDS crisis got a much deserved reception.