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Films:
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Images
of HIV/AIDS Around The World
1994, 25 min
Country: USA
Studio: Deborah Johnson with support from Stanford Health Promotion
Resource Center
Director: Deborah Johnson
Language: English
REVIEW: Images of HIV/AIDS Around the World
is a 25 minute video documentary featuring exce pts from 112
television public service announcements (PSA's) from 27 countries
inclu ing Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Zimbab
Fast-paced and hi hly entertaining, the video demonstrates how
different cultures have used humor, fear, l ve, logic and authority
to inform audiences about HIV/AI S. It also illustrates the
excepti nal creativity in presenting safe sex and HIV/AIDS through
symbols, letters and, occasiona ly, peop Because of the richness
and diversity of its information, This video is usefu to anyone
creating HIV/AIDS educational materia s. While particularly
helpful to those wor ing in cross-cultural contexts, it also
describes basic principles of effective mes age construct. |
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Imiti Ikula
2001, 26 min
Country: Zambia
Director: Sampa Kangwa and Simon Wilkie
Language: Bemba and Nyanja with English subtitles
REVIEW: Memory is one of the 75, 000 street
kids in Lusaka, most of them orphans due to AIDS. Although she
is hard, streetwise and ready to fight, she has a softer side
which influences her daily living, like finding a way to watch
the solar eclipse, getting her hair braided, cooking, singing
and talking with her friends. She is a street child who fights
for -and finds - her own identity and destiny. Vulnerable, yet
strong, Memory is a compelling character. |
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It’s
Not Easy
1991, 48 min
Country: Uganda
Studio: John Riber with support from USAID/Kampala, AIDSCOM,
AED, JHU, EIL, FUE and DSR
Director: Faustin Misanvu
Language: English
REVIEW: Career, family and a nice girlfriend
are all going well for Suna, a young African business executive.
But everything changes when his newborn son is found to be infected
with HIV - the deadly AIDS virus. It’s Not Easy, but neighbors
and co-workers learn to be become allies, instead of enemies,
in the battle for life. The movie is an anthem in Africa’s
struggle against the AIDS plague.
Awards: 1991 National Council on Family
Relations; 1991 New York Festival; 1991 Medikinale International
Parma; 1991 Prix Futura - Berlin; 1991 International Communications
Industries Association; 1991 FESPACO; 1991 Black Filmmakers
Hall of Fame; 1992 British Medical Association; 1994 Cinevue. |
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iThemba
(Hope)
2005, 58 min
Country: United States of America
Studio: Sundance Channel
Directors: Nelson Walker III & Keefe J. Murren
Language: English
REVIEW: iThemba|Hope (ih-TEM-bah) is a character-driven
documentary about the Sinikithemba (sin-ih-kih-TEM-bah) Choir.
Made up of 30 HIV+ South Africans, the Sinikithemba Choir's
mission is to advocate for the more than 5 million HIV+ people
in South Africa. The choir's powerful blend of Traditional Zulu
and Gospel music stirs the hearts of all who hear their music.
Their goal is to move their audience to action in the fight
against the epidemic that is decimating their communities.
iThemba is a chronicle of the Sinikithemba Choir's journey to
the United States to perform at an international AIDS conference
in Boston (CROI). For the choir members it is the first chance
to bring their message to a global audience, for the scientists
and activists in attendance it is an opportunity to listen to
the plea and see first-hand, the strength of the people they
are working so diligently to save.
Our guide through the film is one of the choir's lead vocalists,
Zinhle Thabethe (ZIN-kleh Tah-BEH-tay). 26 years old, HIV+ and
a single mother, Zinhle is typical of many HIV+ people in South
Africa -- in all respects but one. Zinhle is one of the lucky
few South Africans receiving anti-retroviral treatment. Her
knowledge of her unique good fortune animates everything that
Zinhle says and does. As an HIV/AIDS councilor and tireless
advocate for HIV+ persons Zinhle sets herself up as living evidence
that ARVs can save people's lives and that the AIDS epidemic
does not have to be a death sentence for her community. |
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Kids
1995, 91 min
Country: United States of America
Studio: Vidmark / Trimark
Director: Larry Clark
Language: English
REVIEW: Powerful and passionate, colorful and
compelling, Larry Clark's KIDS is 24 frenetic hours in the life
of a group of contemporary teenagers who, like all teenagers,
believe they are invincible. With breathtaking images from one
of the world's most renowned photographers, KIDS is a deeply
affecting, no-holds-barred landscape of words and images, depicting
with raw honesty the experiences, attitudes and uncertainties
of innocence lost. KIDS gets under the skin and lingers, long
after it is viewed. The kids at the core of the story are just
that: teenagers living the urban melee of modern-day America.
But while these kids dwell in the big city, their story could,
quite possibly, happen anywhere. |
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Lets Talk
About It
&
Dispel Your Attitudes
2001, 16 min
Country: South Africa
Director: Sithunyiwe Gece and Lizo Kalipa
Language: Xhosa with English subtitles
REVIEW:
Let's Talk About It (Sithunyiwe Gece, 8 minutes)
The film reflects prevailing attitudes towards HIV/AIDS in the
townships of Cape Town by a filmmaker who lives there. It looks
at young peoples' perceptions of HIV/AIDS and the challenges
they face in practicing safer sex.
Dispel Your Attitudes (Lizo Kalipa, 8 minutes)
Philiswa is an HIV positive woman and an AIDS activist. She
fearlessly discusses the virus in a taxi ride to meet Mr. X,
an HIV positive man afraid to disclose his status. He starts
to explore his fears when the two meet. |
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Living
Positive: Women And AIDS
2001, 45 min
Country: United States
Studio: Karen Robinson Hunte & Harold E. Houze, Jr.
Director: Karen Robinson Hunte
Language: English
REVIEW: Living Positive examines the lives
of five HIV/AIDS diagnosed women from different ethnic and socio-economic
backgrounds (African-American, Latino and Caucasian). What is
unique about this film is that it highlights everyday women
who just happened to fall into misfortune. It could happen to
anyone.
The film follows the women over the course of four years. It
explores important life lessons about love, strength, empowerment
and learning to have faith in oneself. It is about the women's
fears, triumphs, families, respective ethnic communities and
what life is like for them day to day.
Through their stories we come to understand how they have grown
from a place of fear to a place where they appreciate the beauty
of life and strive to live each day fully. By the end, we learn
how to prevent being infected with the HIV virus, what to do
if one learns that he or she is infected, and how to live well
in spite of it.
"Recommended for lower division health sciences courses
and social work courses at the college level." Lori Widzinksi,
Health Sciences Library, University of Buffalo (MC Journal:
the Journal of Academic Media Librarianship) |
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Looking
For Busi
2001, 52 min
Country: South Africa
Director: Robyn Hofmeyr
Language: English and Zulu with English subtitles
REVIEW: Here is the incredible story of a fifteen-year-old
's journey to take control of her life. Abandoned by her mother
when she becomes pregnant, even before testing positive for
HIV, she must depend on the help of extended family and friends.
Life starts to look up when Busi is chosen both for a mother-to-child
drug trial and to be the subject of a TV documentary. But after
the television program is aired on South African TV exposing
her HIV status to the world, she disappears. Desperately worried,
the filmmaker and her best friend go looking for her. |
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Love In
A Time Of Sickness
2001, 26 min
Country: South Africa
Director: Khalo Matabane
Language: English
REVIEW: At a boisterous and urbane dinner party,
Khalo Matabane recounts to his friends an apparently innocent
story about how he met a beautiful woman, flirted with her and
started dating her. When the woman discloses her HIV status,
Khalo does not see her again. The story is intercut with Khalo's
examination of his own sexual history, brought up in a household
of women. This film is an honest account of how the already
complex nature of relating takes on new meaning in a time of
sickness. |
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Master Positive
&
Not Afraid
2001, 15 min
Country: Namibia
Director: Kelly Kowalski and Carla Hoffman
Language: English and Nama with English subtitles
REVIEW:
Master Positive (Kelly Kowalski, 8 minutes)
Master Positive makes cheap coffins for the poor. It's a new
business, but he thinks there's a viable market considering
Namibia's growing AIDS-related deaths. This short film follows
Master Positive as he constructs a prototype papier-mâché
coffin and makes his first sale. Dealing with death in his job
and confronting his own HIV status, Master Positive explains
through humor and courage how he has become a true master of
positive living.
Not Afraid (Carla Hoffmann, 7 minutes)
Cathy, who is from Namibia, relates her experience as an HIV+
mother who lost her baby due to lack of access to treatment.
Her message to other HIV+ women is cautionary, yet life affirming:"I'm
still a human being, I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm myself.
I can still use my hands and feet." Not afraid of death,
Cathy is an inspiration for life. |
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