World AIDS Day: How Sex Positivity Saved Lives

Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam

Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam are the filmmakers behind Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story, which they co-directed for HBO. Called a "masterclass in biographical filmmaking" by Tribeca's Jose Rodriguez, it reached #3 on HBO's most-watched list. As showrunner and director, they made HBO Max's Swiping America and worked on NBC's Emmy-winning Who Do You Think You Are?, which Schwam showran for a decade. Gunther is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. Selected other work includes the critically acclaimed features The New Public (PBS, Kino Lorber) and Pull Out (Amazon), the short doc Sunset & The Mockingbird (now streaming on PBS), shorts for Amazon's The New Yorker Presents, and Black Patriots: Heroes of the American Revolution, for which she received a Christopher Award. Schwam is an Emmy-nominated showrunner who has produced more than 200 hours of television for HBO, Amazon, ABC, NBC, and National Geographic. Her series have been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award, a Critics' Choice Award, and the Emmy. She is the author of The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  

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Jeremy Stulberg

Jeremy Stulberg, ACE is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and editor, most recently editing Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story (2026), which traces the rise of a boundary-pushing, sex-positive, cable-access pioneer who became an accidental AIDS-era lifeline and First Amendment fighter. He edited Move Ya Body: The Birth of House (2025), directed by Elegance Bratton and produced by Roger Ross Williams, premiering at Sundance 2025. He wrote and edited Sabbath Queen (2024), Executive Produced by Darren Aronofsky and directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski, premiering at Tribeca and receiving multiple festival awards, a theatrical release, and was named a New York Times Critics' Pick. A Sundance Documentary Fellow, he has received grants and funding from organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts, The Sundance Documentary Fund, The Tribeca Film Institute, and ITVS. He was a consulting editor on Laura Poitras's Terror Contagion (2021) (Cannes premiere, Academy Award shortlist, distributed by NEON). His debut feature, Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (2007), premiered on The Sundance Channel, winning eight Best Documentary awards and earning a Gotham Award nomination. Jeremy has also produced and edited nationally airing social-issue documentaries such as The Education of Shelby Knox (2005) (POV/Sundance), Young Lakota (2012) (Independent Lens), as well as series including “Vice” (2019) (Showtime/Emmy-Nominated), “Children of the Underground” (2022) (FX/Story Syndicate), “Woman with Gloria Steinem” (2016) (Vice/Emmy-Nominated), and “Gaycation” (2016) (Vice). He also edited Todd Stephens's queer cult comedy Another Gay Movie (2006).

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Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle is a feminist artist, filmmaker, sexologist, and ecosexual. A multimedia artist who loves to collaborate, she has spent more than five decades expanding boundaries around sex, gender, and ecology. Sprinkle began her career in sex work and appeared in more than 100 adult feature films between 1974 and 1996, before becoming an internationally known performance artist. Her experiences shaped her lifelong commitment to feminism, social justice, human rights, environmental activism and freedom of expression.

Sprinkle toured her one-woman theater pieces about her life, including Post Porn Modernist and Hardcore from the Heart, to more than 20 countries. She coined the term “post porn” to describe her genre-bending work, and her films have screened at hundreds of festivals worldwide. Her environmental documentary feature film trilogy, codirected with longtime partner and collaborator Beth Stephens, explores their vision of the Earth as a lover. Their film Water Makes Us Wet premiered at documenta 14 in Germany, where Sprinkle was an official artist. The film subsequently screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Sprinkle’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking, the Performance Studies International Artist/Scholar/Activist Award, and the Tom of Finland Lifetime Achievement Award. At 71, Sprinkle continues to make films, perform, exhibit visual art and spread her love internationally.

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