Movie review: AIDS JaaGO- a series of short films on HIV-AIDS

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

I recently did a movie review of a series of short films produced by

Mira Nair's Mirabai films production house on HIV-AIDS in India. These

are available online at http://www.jaman.com/aidsjaago

Since the movies are of short duration, these can be useful in trainings to

bring out issues related to vulnerabilities, gender, stigma, discrimination,

ethics etc.

Find below the movie review as well- an edited version appears in the Indian

Journal of Medical Ethics at http://ijme.in/164fr193.html

________

AIDS JaaGO: Four cinematic short films on HIV-AIDS

Produced by NRI film director Mira Nair's company Mirabai

Films, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, AIDS Jaago is a

collection of four short movies on HIV-AIDS in contemporary India. Directed by

leading and acclaimed directors, these short movies fall in the middle zone

between public awareness ad campaigns and documentaries or feature films.

Utilizing leading actors as characters, these short movies aim to do public

education on a major public health issue in the country.

Without the trappings of concerns of producers about box office success and

profits (as its bankrolled by the Foundation), the directors would be expected

to utilize the cinematic medium to illustrate issues creatively, while keeping

mass appeal in

mind.

Blood Brothers helmed by Vishal Bharadwaj stars Siddhartha

Suryanarayab as a young advertising executive Arjun Dutt who is living a

successful face paced life. As part of a (presumably) routine blood test, he is

told by his doctor he has tested HIV positive. Distraught that he has put his

life and the life of his son and pregnant wife at risk through an extra-marital

fling, he runs away from home to roam the streets. Beaten in a fight, eccentric

doctor Dr. Bhootnath (Pankaj Kapur) rescues him and gets a re-test which shows

Arjun is not really HIV positive. It's a case of mistaken identities and Arjun

tries to reconcile with his family and explores a way to communicate the results

to the other Arjun Dutt who got tested at the same time.

It's a bit strange to contemplate why there was no confirmatory test in the

first place, and how easy it is for Arjun to find his blood-brother through

bribing the clinic guard, but then the sensibilities are drawn from Bollywood,

and anything is possible. Sensitive portrayals by the lead actors; and Pankaj

Kapur in a brief role is a delight as the gruffy straight talking doctor.

Positive, directed by Farhan Akhtar focuses on the turmoil in a family where the

flirtatious photographer husband Mr. Soni (Boman Irani) has trysts with his

models, his wife (Shabana Azmi) refusing to acknowledge the lies she is told,

and the son (Krish Chawla as the young Abhijit and Arjun Mathur as the older

one) is caught in between.

Wanting to distance himself from his dysfunctional family, Abhijit moves to

South Africa for higher studies, but is brought back by a phone call from his

mother informing him about his father having AIDS. The rest of the film deals

with the conflicts and anguish

which arise between father and son, and son and mother, and ensuing

reconciliation as they deal with the illness. It' s a bit surprising to see Mr.

Soni move from diagnosis to death in a few months.

Power packed performances though, and strong on exploring emotional upheavals

which can happen in a family when HIV strikes. Laudably the film also brings out

realistic issues such as insurance company refusal to cover hospital care for a

HIV patient.

Prarambha is the only one of the lot which is in a regional

language- Kannada. I found it to be the best. Santosh Sivan tells the story of a

young kid Kittu whose mother has left him a couple of years ago. Searching for

his mom through a letter he got with a city address, he hitches a ride with a

truck driver. The building of the bond between the two, and the sense of social

isolation the young kid feels on losing his mom and being ostracized and thrown

out of school (as he is HIV-positive too) is sensitively brought out.

The attempted failed reunion with the mother, who refuses to acknowledge her son

(for his own good as she says) while she is dying of AIDS in the hospital, and

the struggles of re-admission in the school for Kittu illustrate social stigma

effectively.

Mirroring the Kerala case where HIV positive children were thrown out of school,

the complexities of morality, parental insecurities and

misinformation, role of law and media are all touched upon. Prabhu Deva as the

street-smart truck driver Puttaswamy Gowda and Skandhar as the innocent Kittu

portray believable characters the viewer connects with.

Migration, directed by Mira Nair herself packs many tracks in a short time.

Dealing with the issue of drought instigated migration, it

brings farmer Birju (Shiney Ahuja) to Mumbai. Working at a Construction site (in

a rain-drenched Mumbai which looks beautiful on screen), he encounters

intimacy-starved housewife Divya (Sameera Reddy) who is caught in a loveless

marriage, and hounded by a suspicious and controlling mother-in-law. The husband

Abhay (Irrfan Khan), a closet gay, does not have the courage to be honest with

his wife about his inclination, and it is actually his frustrated male partner

who brings an end to the relationship.

Exposing the dirt underneath the external normal surface in middle-class India,

as she did in Monsoon Wedding too, is Mira Nair's forte.

This includes using the pregnancy as cure to all problems in a marriage theme.

Birju returns to his village, gets his wife Yamuna (Raima Sen) pregnant, but

also infects her and their newborn child with HIV.

It's unfortunate the director did not use the opportunity to highlight

ante-natal testing, and possibility of Prevention of

Parent to Child Transmission. The disclosure of the diagnosis by the nurse

immediately after delivery also seems inexplicable, without any kind of consent

and discussion. All the portrayals in Migration bring out a myriad of emotions,

from guilt to suppressed emotions, and human wants.

The short movies are a very good attempt at exploring the human side of

HIV-AIDS. One however gets the feeling that the audience these

movies are made for is primarily an urban one. The central characters are

primarily male, and it would have been good if at least one of the movies

focused more in detail on trials and tribulations of the effect of HIV on women.

Released in 2007, these short films seem to have mainly been in the festival

circuit, and some slots on news channels, and available online at Jaman, an

online movie library.

One hopes they will be open to a larger audience soon. Perhaps, next time we

will also see other diseases getting some focus in the able hands of leading

directors.

Best wishes,

Anant

Anant Bhan

E-MAIL: <dranantbhan@...>