Made for Soviet TV, Risk Group begins as a sobering assessment of AIDS in the U.S.S.R. The head of the country's Academy of Medical Sciences acknowledges not only the occurrence of AIDS, but the presence of the necessary social conditions for its spread. Here, the documentary leaves the halls of medicine for Moscow's back alleys and hidden niches where prostitutes, homosexuals and drug users dwell. The investigative portrait is a grim one: hookers hide their faces in fear, gay men talk in the secrecy of darkened restaurants, junkies congregate in sleazy apartments waiting for a fix. These high-risk groups seem to exist in a social netherworld, ignored by all except the judicial system. The interviews are intercut with macabre footage of blank-faced workers moving through the city's Metro while bells toll in the background. The ambivalence of the producers toward their much-beleaguered comrades permeates the documentary. The interview questions are often moralistic, distancing this Muscovite Other. It is as if the "risk group" signals not a threatening epidemic, but a general disease of the body politic. John Greyson's Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers is a playfully shocking account of the 1985 Moscow Youth Festival. As an openly gay delegate from Toronto, he candidly examines contemporary gay life and the turnabouts in Soviet policies toward sexual freedom. The eccentric bent of Greyson's "diary" is accentuated by staged interviews, telling snippets from Rock Hudson films, and oddly juxtaposed images of Soviet life. Knowing the complexities of the gay issue, Greyson shies away from judging the Soviet Union. Steve Seid Note: John Greyson's videotape contains scenes that are sexually explicit.