NotAIDS! News
January 28, 2007

Four Bollywood directors are planning short films depicting stories of people dealing with HIV. The films will be shown in theaters before full-legnth feature films, and will start in the autumn of 2007.

Mira Nair, director of such Bollywood hits as "Mississippi Masala" and the film, "Kama Sutra" said last week that these short films will capitalize on the star-power of the headlining film to attract attention to a topic often forgotten in India.

Her production company, Mirabai films, the non-profit, Avahan, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up to support AIDS jaggo["Wake up to AIDS"].

"The idea is to piggyback on blockbusters to spread AIDS awareness," Nair said during a news conference.

Ms Nair's film entitled Migration is one of the four shorts to be featured throughout cinemas around India.

Two of the movie shorts will be in the Hindi language, while the other two will be in southern Indian languages such as Tamil, according to an AIDS Jaggo press release.

Showing these short films during previews before major blockbuster releases, the directors hope to increase awareness of the impact HIV has on the people of India.

In the United States HIV/AIDS became a Hollywood cause celebre shortly before actor Rock Hudson died in 1985. The story was thrust into the bright lights of the public eye when Mr. Hudson succumbed to a series of health complications widely reported as AIDS.

However, a review of available biographical data, and a privately-held, unpublished source, seem to indicate that his death was caused by other factors.

Rock Hudson had quadruple bypass heart surgery made necessary by a diet rich in animal fat, years of alcohol abuse, and chain-smoking that continued even after the bypass surgery. His body's rejection of a blood transfusion during the bypass and an experimental AIDS drug called HPA23 given to him by physicians in Paris further eroded his precarious condition.

Ironically, despite having put AIDS on the map of the Hollywood consciousness, Mr. Hudson tested negative for HIV one year before his death in 1985. It is well known that the HIV test, patented by Robert Gallo in 1984, will be positive for transfusion recipients, which may have accounted for Mr. Hudsons initial diagnosis after the quadruple bypass.

Rock Hudson was a major motion picture star during the '60s, and in the '70s he became well-known on the silver screen as the star of the television serial, "MacMillan and Wife." During the AIDS hysteria of the '80s, his cameo appearances on Dynasty that featured his character kissing a female costar made headlines.

Other directors contributing to the short film project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation include Farhan Akthar, director of Dil Chahta Hai (What the Heart Wants), Santosh Sivan who directed The Terrorist, and Vishal Bhardwaj who directed Omkara - a Bollywood treatment of William Shakespeare's Othello.

"We do not want to preach but entertain. Once you start preaching and teaching, people get bored," Mr. Bhardwaj said.

It could be that many suffer from HIV / AIDs "topic fatigue." The HIV story, one with neither a climax nor a conculsion, drones on interminably and has become much like war: an unfortunate and horrific thread in the fabric of our lives. It is a story everyone knows, but one that only directly affects some.

"We want to use cinema (against AIDS) so that it holds a mirror to the world and gets under your skin," says Mira Nair who is helping to organize the project and also is directing one of the AIDS short films.

UNAIDS, an organization whose priority is promoting pharmaceutical industry products and often decries proponents of nutrition, clean water, and sanitation, estimates that India has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS.

UNAIDS has come under fire from a variety of sources lately, including NotAIDS! and several ranking Indian government officials. Many, including a Chicago economist, Emily Oster, question both the techniques and the statistical output of the United Nations body charged with addressing AIDS.

UNAIDS officials say that India has the highest number of AIDS of any nation, a claim that the Indian government vigorously disputes.

New and existing research by Nobel-caliber scientists and eminent physicians, economists, biologists, and psychologists throws in doubt the very dogma created by the United States' Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during the Reagan Administration.

Even if it is true that HIV does not cause AIDS, which is actually not a distinct disease, but a syndrome caused by various factors such as chronic malnutrition, parasites, irritable bowel syndrome (gut leakage caused by tears in the stomach lining), and AIDS drugs, the fact remains that the faulty and non-specific HIV test still reaps enormous profits each year from royalties to Robert Gallo.

These royalties not only fund Mr. Gallo's Maryland laboratories, but help to maintain the CDC and cements its role on the world geopolitical stage, giving the United States almost unfettered access to nations in which it would have no business.

Obviously, a fallacy as historic and monumental such as HIV, which contributes untold billions in cash to the coffers of pharmaceutical companies, government bodies such as UNAIDS, non-governmental organizations (non-profits, NGOs), and local economies around the world, cannot easily be retracted without serious repercussions, professional recrimination, and personal embarrasment.

Hence, the stigma of HIV will continue unabated until the tide of public opinion turns.Bollywood motion picture stars such as Irfan Khan, Sameera Reddy, Raima Sen, Shiny Ahuja, Prabhudeva and Saroja Devi could star in the films, due to show during previews at cinemas around India in September.

Ms Nair explains the importance of the project, and why it is such an achievement. "Lots of stars don't want to be associated with the virus," Nair proclaimed. But, she said that in India, "actors are almost worshipped. The role of films and Bollywood stars in shaping public perception is enormous and our idea is to make more and more people aware about HIV-AIDS."

Bill & Melinda Gates are spending $258 million (or 130 million pounds) through their charitable foundation on HIV in India over a five-year period. The HIV / AIDS short films are part of this five-year plan.

(c) NotAIDS! 2007. All rights reserved.

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