Peter Adair
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Peter Adair was a filmmaker and artist, best known for his pioneering documentary, Word is Out. He was born in Los Angeles County on 22 November 1943.
Adair entered the film industry in the 1960s and first gained critical attention with his 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People, a film record of a Pentecostal snake handler worship service in the Appalachians. From 1975 to 1978, he collaborated with his lesbian sister Nancy Adair to produce and direct Word Is Out: Stories From Some of Our Lives, an examination of the gay community in San Francisco. Though clunky by today's standards, the film was the first of its kind to present gays and lesbians in a positive light. An instant hit with both GLBT people and the more artistic members of the film industry, Word inspired Nancy to collaborate with Casey Adair, Peter and Nancy's mother, on a companion book, published in 1978. The film also marked the first practical experience for a young Rob Epstein, who later directed the film version of The Celluloid Closet. Peter Adair always chose the subject matter for his film based on his current passions, and Word Is Out was as much a vital part of his own coming out process as it was an attempt to show gays and lesbians in a very human and non-sensational manner.
In 1983 Peter Adair produced Stopping History and in 1984 acted as consultant and did additional camerawork on The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by his former protégé Epstein. That same year he worked with the Project Read adult literacy program of the San Francisco Library to produce a series of tutoring videos.
As he began to see his friends in the art and film communities succumb to the plague of AIDS, Adair produced and directed The AIDS Show: Artists Involved in Death and Survival, one of the first films to examine AIDS' impact on the arts community, in 1986. Adair himself was an accomplished and talented painter, like his sister Nancy, specializing in watercolors. When he became aware of his own HIV status, he wrote and directed Absolutely Positive, an examination of how HIV positive people maintain their lives, careers, and relationships.
On 27 June 1996, Peter Adair finally succumbed to complications of AIDS at the age of 53 in San Francisco.
