And the Band Played On

And the Band Played On is a 1993 American television film docudrama directed by Roger Spottiswoode. The teleplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. The film premiered at the Montreal Film Festival before being broadcast by HBO on September 11, 1993. It later was released theatrically in the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Germany, Ar... more

And the Band Played On is a 1993 American television film docudrama directed by Roger Spottiswoode. The teleplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. The film premiered at the Montreal Film Festival before being broadcast by HBO on September 11, 1993. It later was released theatrically in the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Austria, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Australia. In a prologue set in 1976, American epidemiologist Don Francis arrives in a village on the banks of the Ebola River in DR Congo and discovers many of the residents and the doctor working with them have died from a mysterious illness later identified as Ebola hemorrhagic fever. It is his first exposure to such an epidemic, and the images of the dead he helps cremate will haunt him when he later becomes involved with HIV and AIDS research at the Centers for Disease... less