Friday, November 13: 7:00 pm

Known for combining realistic and magical elements in his fiction films, John Greyson brings his creative powers to documentary. Predicated on the conceit that Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson are writing their 1934 avant-garde opera “Four Saints in Three Acts” based on the lives of Zackie Achmat of South African’s Treatment Action Campaign and Tim McCaskell of Canada’s AIDS Action, Fig Trees recounts the history of AIDS activism over the past two decades. Weaving opera and campy clips of rewritten pop tunes, stylized reenactments of possible historical truths and powerful first-person testimony, the documentary implicates governments, corporations, and the media in the deaths by neglect of 25 million people worldwide. Mining bible references, modern history, high art, and popular culture, Greyson employs the gamut of documentary and fiction techniques to tell what is ultimately a simple story of two individuals who are inspired to put their lives on the line to fight for the rights of others.