Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Russell Tovey wants you to know who David Robilliard was. He was a queer British poet and visual artist who died of AIDS in 1988 when he was just 36 years old. “I first learned about David at the ICA in London,” the “American Horror Story” star tells Variety, speaking from his London-area home. “There was a small exhibition there.
Then he sort of was on my mind a lot. Then at the start of the pandemic, I rediscovered his writing poetry. I was so moved because I connected to it straightaway.
It was written all through the late ‘80s, but it resonated with me now. I was like, ‘Why do we not know more about him?’ His art was so proudly queer and about love and jealousy and pain and loneliness and what it is to be gay.
It was so outwardly queer at the time when you just didn’t do that. He was so proudly queer.” Tovey tells Robilliard’s story in “Life Is Excellent,” his new documentary from WePresent, the editorial and digital arts platform of WeTransfer.
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