Would it be too redundant to call a movie “the ACT UP version of Born in Flames“? Born in Flames was already a pro-queer, pro-safe-sex, pro-sex-worker activism piece made in New York City when ACT UP was at its most loudly active — so radical in its politics that it climaxes with a celebratory act of terrorism blowing up the World Trade Center. Still, the political themes of Lizzie Borden’s D.I.Y. No Wave provocation was more focused on feminist issues than the AIDS crisis in particular, as it was made early in the still-worsening epidemic. Over a decade later, another microbudget NYC indie picked up where Born in Flames left off, redirecting its exact brand of political fury at the smiling politicians who left AIDS-suffering citizens to die in droves without lifting a systemic finger to help. Stephen Winter’s 1996 rabblerouser Chocolate Babies may have been made well after ACT UP’s loudest, headline-earning protests, but it’s directly informed by those political actions, exaggerated for shock value & be-gay-do-crimes inspo. It opens with a closeted Councilman being confronted on the front steps of his NYC apartment by a group of protestors, who cut themselves with a switchblade and smear HIV+ blood on the shocked man’s face, who then likens the act to “murder” in the press. Nothing is said of the mass murder he is committing by downplaying & exacerbating the AIDS crisis among his local constituents, of course, which is exactly why that kind of violent public confrontation was necessary to save lives.

The taboo of exposing the public to HIV+ blood becomes a core shock-value tactic for Chocolate Babies, which climaxes with a living-room surgery in a cramped apartment wherein a group of friends dislodge a bullet from their star protestor’s shoulder with bloody tweezers. It’s an excruciatingly long, drawn-out scene shot as if it were a live birth, complete with moaning screams of pain. Between all that bloody violence & shouting, you might miss that the movie is structurally a low-budget romcom. Like Born in Flames, Chocolate Babies is a collection of standalone vignettes musing on a core political theme, loosely stitched together by a propulsive, repetitive soundtrack (in this case, abrasive tribal drums). The story that holds that scatterbrained edit together is an unlikely love triangle between an HIV+ political activist (Max, Claude E. Sloan), the closeted homophobe politician he most often targets (Councilman Melvin Freeman, Bryan Webster), and that politician’s naively idealistic staff member (Sam, Jon Kit Lee). The youngest of the three is caught between two worlds, acting as a subversive employee of the exact government official his friends are protesting, while accidentally falling in love with the men in charge on both sides of that divide. The drag queens, rooftop hedonists, and political dissidents who escalate that conflict to a bloody climax are all lovely people and his closest friends. It’s all very wholesome & sweet, even if it’s politically furious.

The dramatic themes of Chocolate Babies can be sincerely heavy, touching on the loneliness, addiction, and familial bigotry that weigh down its queer community. However, the overall tone of the film is flippantly joyous, with characters complaining that their political actions aren’t accomplishing enough in quips like “I have better things to do with my time. I could be sucking dick!” They self-describe as “raging, atheist, meat-eating, HIV+, colored terrorists,” or “Black faggots with a political agenda” for short. Their politics are shouted in the horrified faces of politicians & businessmen who’d rather peacefully ignore the AIDS epidemic on NYC streets, but they’re just as often delivered as open-mic standup in out-of-context interstitials. The movie ultimately ends on a calming note, with crashing waves and familial love eroding the nonstop barrage of belligerent shouting that preceded. The moment is earned, given the film’s tender love-triangle conflict and sincere internal wrestling with loving someone who’s already given up on surviving their illness. The majority of the runtime is loud, celebratory, and energizing, though, mostly working as a political catalyst for the audience to get in their representatives’ faces instead of just getting high to manage the pain of living.

Chocolate Babies has been available to stream for free on director Stephen Winter’s Vimeo page for years now, seemingly ripped directly from a 1990s VHS tape. Recently, however, the local repertory series Gap Tooth Cinema screened the film at The Broadside in a much nicer, cleaner digital scan that suggests a better future for the film’s home presentation. It belongs to a company of low-budget, queer communal provocations that have finally gotten their full due in cinephile circles over the past decade — titles like Tongues Untied, Fresh Kill, Buddies, Paris is Burning, The Watermelon Woman and, of course, Born in Flames. The only thing it’s missing is a spiffy new Blu-ray release with a crisp, collectible slipcover to cement that status.

-Brandon Ledet