On this date the film “Longtime Companion” opened in New York City. It was the first major studio release to deal with AIDS. 

One of the first films to offer a thoughtful treatment of the AIDS epidemic and its effects on the Gay community, Longtime Companion was directed by Norman Rene, who would die of AIDS himself in 1996. The ensemble drama is told through a series of vignettes that begins with the first New York Times report on the mysterious “cancer” that had resulted in the deaths of a growing number of homosexual men and ends eight years later, after the disease has thoroughly and devastatingly affected the movie’s close-knit core group of characters.