American filmmaker Arthur (Artie) Bressan was BOTD in 1943. Born in New York City, he studied at New York University and Iona College. After graduating, he became a school teacher and later worked for the US Department of Education. Largely self-taught, he began making short films in his spare time. He relocated to San Francisco in the early 1970s to live openly as a gay man. His 1972 film Coming Out profiled the participants in San Francisco’s first gay pride parade, followed by Passing Strangers, a queer love story featuring real sex scenes. He also worked as a journalist, interviewing his hero Frank Capra for Andy Warhol‘s magazine Interview. He is best known for his 1977 feature-length documentary Gay USA, chronicling gay rights activists facing off against Christian fundamentalist campaigners. Promoted by his friend Harvey Milk, the film compared the anti-gay Save Our Children spokeswoman Anita Bryant with the homophobic and genocidal policies of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and the Ku Klux Klan. In his subsequent films Forbidden Letters, Abuse, Pleasure Beach, Juice and Daddy Dearest, he blended gay romantic narratives with hardcore sex scenes. His final film Buddies, released in 1985, was the first American feature film to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its devastating effects on the gay community. He died in 1987 of an AIDS-related illness, aged 44.