Objective

In the middle of New York City, a gaping hole still exists at ground zero where a team of architects, designers, developers and surviving family members of the World Trade Center attacks continue to deliberate a man-made memorial to lives lost on September 11, 2001. In the middle of another populated urban center, a very different kind of space has been created to memorialize the lives lost to the worst epidemic in modern times.

In the late 1980s a group of visionary environmentalists in San Francisco, devastated by the personal and collective toll of AIDS, appealed to the city to found the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park as a living tribute to those touched by AIDS. Years later in 1996, by a decree of President Clinton, this place of remembering and healing became a national memorial, one of only 44 in the country and two in California. A swamp was transformed into sacred ground and today stands as a unique example of civic restoration, environmental protection, and community response to grief and loss.

FORGET ME NOT (working title), a 53-minute documentary program, chronicles the transformation of the Grove from a neglected eye-sore to a landscaped sanctuary. The film follows the volunteers who work tirelessly each month to maintain it and the people whose personal histories reflect the story of AIDS in San Francisco and around the world. As the Grove gains national recognition, it begins to pose challenging questions about what constitutes an appropriate memorial for the AIDS pandemic.

FORGET ME NOT examines the Grove’s evolving constituents and what happens when those constituents – some local, some national, some artistic, some environmental - contest the very nature of a “living memorial” and pose the question: Who owns grief in the public sphere? In the end, the film humanizes this debate while highlighting the very personal stories embedded and unearthed in the National AIDS Memorial, including those of the founders, whose efforts created something larger, and more controversial, than they could have ever imagined. Responding to a deep grief in their own lives and community, they unwittingly touched on a universal chord: In time of loss, how does a community join to remember and heal?