Today marks the 25th annual World AIDS Day. What, you thought HIV/AIDS was a thing of the past? That’s a somewhat understandable reaction, especially considering the media’s recent coverage – or lack thereof – of the continuing crisis. For a problem that was unfairly marginalized for much of its existence as “the gay disease” to have fallen so far off the radar at a time when gay culture is part of the mainstream and states are lining up to offer same-sex marriages is particularly maddening.

On the TV front, one of the medium’s longest running and most positive portrayals of a person with HIV, Dr. Robin Scorpio-Drake (Kimberly McCullough) on the daytime drama General Hospital, was recently “killed” off the show when the actress chose to leave. She didn’t die from the disease, though, but in a lab explosion in the basement, and as fans know, she isn’t really dead, but being held hostage in a Swiss hospital by a bad guy from her past who is wearing a rubber mask to pass himself off as her mother’s long thought dead ex-husband who …. OK, let’s move on.

More recently, super-talented yet scandal-prone R&B man R. Kelly released the third set of his soapy video serial, Trapped in the Closet, which follows up on the mysterious “package” alluded to in the last cliffhanger, widely believed to be a reference to HIV/AIDS as the panic-stricken cast of promiscuous characters (many acted by Kelly) play an extremely depressing game of Telephone. As ridiculously entertaining as this musical melodrama is, it might not be the ideal standard bearer for the cause.

But what else? When was the last time you saw an entertainment even mention the disease, let alone position it as a major plot point or inflict it on a major character. To be fair, General Hospital, currently on a creative and ratings upswing, is also bring back its late-90s’ tradition of the Nurse’s Ball, an on and off-screen variety show fundraiser for AIDS and HIV research and awareness. But why is a show that was on death’s door a year ago when its fellow ABC soap operas were cancelled carrying all the weight?

Here are the sobering (estimated) statistics: According to AIDS.gov, more than a million people in the United States are living with HIV, although one in five don’t know it; a new person is infected in this country every 9.5 minutes; worldwide, international AIDS charity AVERT reports that 34 million people were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2010; of those, almost 23 million of those were in Sub-Saharan Africa; in that same year, 2.7 million people were newly infected and 1.8 million people died of AIDS or AIDS-related causes.

And while the overall growth of the epidemic has plateaued in recent years and the number of new HIV infections each year has steadily declined, we are still far, far from eradicating the tragedy. Meanwhile, entire African countries are being ravaged and becoming nations of orphaned children.

So where are the movies in all this? Last year I wrote this post about the best movies touching on the now three decades-old crisis. In it I bemoaned the fact that nothing new had been added to the list in six years. Make that seven now.

Well, all except one: the documentary How to Survive a Plague, which traces the two coalitions, ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), whose efforts helped make AIDS into a manageable condition and not a terminal condition.  It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival back in January and just this week picked up another for Film Independent’s Spirit Awards to be given out in February. Last month, it won best documentary at the 22nd annual Gotham Independent Film Awards.  It currently has a 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars, Andrew O’ Hehir of Salon calls it “[o]ne of the most important documentaries in years or decades,” and Amy Biancolli, formerly of the Houston Chronicle and now, again, a Times Union writer (welcome back, Amy!), said, “It stands as one of the most heartbreaking and suspenseful sagas of the year.”

Have you seen it? Or even heard of it? It hasn’t played here, and as far as we can tell, there are no plans for it to open soon. It has made a whopping $122,665 since its Sept. 21 opening. And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences neglected to include it on its recent shortlist of eight feature docs eligible for an Oscar nomination.

Here’s hoping next year we can say that a cure has been found, or failing that, that treatment options have slowed its progress and contributed to a continuing downward trend. In the interim, let’s hope we’ll get access to this film and that Hollywood will remember a still very real pandemic that claimed so many from its own community over the years.