Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt

On the eve of 1987's Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be added to a large-scale memorial quilt project. Drawing from the sea of names memorialized, director Robert Epstein focuses on the lives of six people. Alongside the intimate profiles offered, through news footage and interviews, Epstein puts the AIDS crisis in the larger context of social and government response to the disease.

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  Jeffrey Friedman
• 
  Rob Epstein

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  Dustin Hoffman
  Narrator (voice)
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  Sara Lewinstein
  Storyteller (Story Subject: Dr. Tom Waddell)
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  David Mandell
  Storyteller (Story Subject: David Mandell Jr.)
• 
  Suzi Mandell
  Storyteller (Story Subject: David Mandell Jr.)
• 
  Sallie Perryman
  Storyteller (Story Subject: Robert Perryman)
• 
  Vito Russo
  Storyteller (Story Subject: Jeffrey Sevcik)
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  Tracy Torrey
  Storyteller (Story Subject: Self and David C. Campbell)
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  Gregg Baker
  Self - News Reporter (archive footage)
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  Gary Bauer
  Self - Policy Advisor to the President (archive footage)
• 
  Robert Bazell
  Self - News Reporter (archive footage)
• 
  Kevin Boyle
  Self - News Reporter (archive footage)
• 
  Edward Brandt
  Self - Assistant Secretary for Health (archive footage)
• 
  Tom Brokaw
  Self - News Reporter (archive footage)
• 
  Bobbi Campbell
  Self (archive footage)
• 
  David C. Campbell
  Self (archive footage)
• 
  Marcus A. Conant
  Self (archive footage)
• 
  James Curran
  Self - Center for Disease Control (archive footage)
• 
  Bolton Eckert
  Self - News Reporter (archive footage)
• 
  Jerry Falwell
  Self - Moral Majority Leader (archive footage)
• 
  Virginia Fedosky
  Self (archive footage)