Themes

Under the headline Themes, you can find a wide selection of short film stories and interviews, focused on certain themes related to HIV/AIDS.

• One-to-One interviews
• Spread
• Prevention and Advocacy
• Treatment, Care and Community Support
• Science of AIDS and Vaccine Research
• Global Impact and Response
• Gender & SR issues
• Human rights and Stigma
• Young People
• People living with HIV/AIDS

Interviews: One-to-One

In 2006, the Face of AIDS project started to make a series of international both personal and in depth two- four hour long interviews with key people in the world involved in the global AIDS arena. These interviews are made with internationally respected AIDS experts, scientists, opinion makers, activists, health decision makers, people living with HIV/AIDS and other key persons involved in the global fight against HIV and AIDS. These in depth interviews, conducted by Face of AIDS Director Staffan Hildebrand are made in the private home of the interviewed persons. Some such long interviews were also made before 2006. We call these interviews “One to one”. The idea is to present the experiences, visions and life stories of these key people and make it accesible to the world thorugh the Face of AIDS website in an edited form. Watching these interviews will promote a better understanding of different points of view of HIV/AIDS and the human dimension of the epidemic. Between March 2006 and May 2008 Staffan Hildebrand made 22 one-to-one interviews. See the list by clicking here...

Spread

This section of the Face of AIDS digital film archive contains a selection of edited films, containg both stories and interviews focusing on how HIV and the AIDS Pandemic has spread in different parts of the world, from its start in the late 1970´s and onwards. By watching the specially edited films, you can choose to study different aspects of the pandemic either by a region or a country, by a timeline or by listening to an interview with an AIDS expert, a person on the field or a person living with HIV and AIDS.

Face of AIDS is covering the dramatic first phase of the pandemic in the end 70 and early 80, the phase of discovery from 1982 when AIDS got its name, 1983 when the virus was first dicovered and until the first AIDS test entered the market in 1985. Then we cover how AIDS was labeled as Gay Cancer , as many of the early infected were gays. Then there was media´s attention to risk groups, with injecting drug users, prostitutes and hemophliacs added to the list. In the late 80´s the sprea of HIVd weas relatively controlled in the Western world. The real sprad was focused to the 26 countries in Sub Sahara. Latin America was hit relatively mild, compared to Africa. Thailand was the first country in South East Asia hit hard by AIDS in early 90´s. Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union countries, was hit hard in the early 90´s through sharing of needles among injecting drug users. India and China are now fighting its own AIDS battle. Face of AIDS tries to chronicle through a timeline how the pandsemic was spread all over the world.

According to figures from UNAIDS in Geneva fdrom 2007, 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the world, and 8000 are infected every day, half of them young people between 15- 25 years old.

Prevention and Advocacy

Face of AIDS film archive has focused much on documenting how prevention actually works. We have filmed prevention projects and interviewed local, national and global leaders engaged in prevention and advocacy. We have edited a wide range of films, which highlights succesful prevention projects and advocacy work in different parts of the world. The films are shot between 1988 – 2008. We hope the selected films will give you both information and inspiration on how prevention and advocacy is practiced around the world.

Treatment, Care and Community Support

The Face of AIDS project has documented major milestones in the development of treatment, care and community support for people living with HIV and AIDS since 1987. We have edited special films to highlight the period when there was no medication at all, when the first drug, AZT was launched 1986 and then the landmark breakthrough of the anti retro viral therapy 1996 and the continued global efforts to make the anti retro viral treatment accesible to all those in need in developing countries, starting with the United Nations General Assembly on AIDS in 2001.

Science of AIDS and Vaccine Research

Face of AIDS has documented how the virus – HIV- was discovered in 1983. It was discovered at the same time by a French group of Scientists around dr Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and another group around Dr. Robert C Gallo at the National Cancer Institute, at NIH at Bethesda outside Washington DC. Both of them have been interviewed several times by Face of AIDS film team. They foresaw early on the difficulties to develop a functioning and preventive AIDS vaccine. The scientists know more about the AIDS virus than about any other viruses in the world, but still no one is sure when there will be an effective AIDS vaccine. Face of AIDS have continuously interviewed top scientists and policy makers involved in the global effort to develop a preventive or therapeutic AIDS vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Head of US AIDS research at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda,Dr Seth Berkley, Founder and Director of International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) are among those in the Face of AIDS film archive explains the background of the problem and current efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine in the near future, but both of them believe there will be one eventually.

Global Impact and Response

It began quietly, when a statistical anomaly pointed to a mysterious syndrome that attacked the immune systems of gay men in California. No one imagined 25 years ago that AIDS would become the deadliest epidemic in modern history. Since June 5, 1981, HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has killed more than 25 million people, infected 40 million others, and left a legacy of unspeakable loss, hardship, fear and despair. The Face of AIDS documentation has focused much of its attention to film different aspects of the global impact of the pandemic, especially in the worst hit countries in the world. Much of the documentation has been made on some of the the 26 countries in the Sub Saharan Region, the worst affected area in the world.

No other disease has led to such a strong global response, which has taken place in the effort to halt AIDS, especially since the year 2001, and the major political event The United Nations Special Session on AIDS (UNGASS). It was the first time that a global disease was discussed for a full day in the Security Council. That made a big impact worldwide. Face of AIDS was there to document this milestone event.

Many of the leaders, opinion makers and activists interviewed by Face of AIDS over time, clearly look upon the fight against HIV/AIDS not only as a health issue but also as a social, political and economic issue requiring commitment at the top level of the affected society. The Executive Director of the United Nations AIDS Secretariat (UNAIDS) in Geneva explains AIDS as an exceptional disease, which succeeded to get increased funding from 200 million dollars in 1999 to 8 billion dollars in 2007. The specially edited Face of AIDS films on this issue, highlight how the global impact AIDS has had the social, cultural, economic impact in the affected societies is very devastating. "Particularly in southern Africa, we may have to apply a new notion, and that is of the 'under-developed' nations. These are nations which, because of the AIDS epidemic, are going backwards,'' Peter Piot, states the director of UNAID Piot in a 2007 interview comments "The crisis of AIDS continues and is getting worse and any slackening of our efforts would jeopardize the hard-won gains of each and every one of us."

In this segment of the Themes section Face of AIDS also highlight major global organizations and initiatives, such as UNAIDS, International AIDS Society, the Global Fund against AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden and many others.

Gender & SR issues

To include Face of AIDS documentation on gender issues and issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights into all HIV/AIDS prevention has become an increasingly important. Hundreds locally active creative gender based projects are going on worldwide. Face of AIDS has documented many of them, such as: Young Men as Equal Partners in Zambia, ABIA in Brazil or MAMTA in India.

In the edited films we try to show how gender roles and relations powerfully influence the course and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Gender-related factors shape the extent to which men, women, boys and girls are vulnerable to HIV infection, the ways in which AIDS affects them, and the kinds of responses that are feasible in different communities and societies. Many of the interviews we have made, explain how gender inequalities are a major driving force behind the AIDS epidemic. The different

Human rights and Stigma

Since the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS has claimed 25 million lives. 35 million people are living with HIV. Its destructive force is fueled by a wide range of human rights violations, stigma and discrimination. This has been a very important focal point in the Face of AIDS documentation since the very start in 1987.

These violations include sexual violence and coercion faced by women and girls, stigmatization of men who have sex with men, abuses against sex workers and injecting drug users, and violations of the right of young people to information on HIV transmission. In prisons, HIV spreads with frightening efficiency due to sexual violence, lack of access to condoms, lack of harm reduction measures for injecting drug users, and lack of information. Human rights violations only add to the stigmatization of persons at highest risk of infection and thus marginalize and drive underground those most in need of information, preventive services, and treatment. Persons living with the disease are subject to stigmatization and discrimination in society, including in the workplace and in access to government services. Women whose husbands have died of AIDS are regularly rejected by their own and their husband's families and their property are frequently taken from them. Thousands of children who have lost parents to AIDS or whose parents are living with the disease have lost their inheritance rights, have had to take on hazardous labor including prostitution, and have been forced to live on the streets where they are subject to police violence and other abuses.

Documenting human rights abuses related to HIV/AIDS and raising awareness about them is essential to combating the epidemic. Face of AIDS is documenting these issues and understands that HIV continues to spread throughout the world, shadowed by increasing challenges to human rights, at both national and global levels. The virus continues to be marked by discrimination against population groups: those who live on the fringes of society or who are assumed to be at risk of infection because of behaviors, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or social characteristics that are stigmatized in a particular society. In most of the world, discrimination also jeopardizes equitable distribution of access to HIV-related goods for prevention and care, including drugs necessary for HIV/AIDS care and the development of vaccines to respond to the specific needs of all populations, in both the North and South. As the number of people living with HIV and with AIDS continues to grow in nations with different economies, social structures, and legal systems, HIV/AIDS-related human rights issues are not only becoming more apparent, but also becoming increasingly diverse.

Young People

Face of AIDS has focused much of its attention to film young people involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS all over the world. Several of the films, produced during the 20 year of documentation cover this important theme. Young People is an increasing importantly group in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. According to UNAIDS recent estimates in the 2007 Epidemic Update, half of the 7000 people getting infected each day in the world, are in the age group 15- 25.

Especially this is an urgent problem in the hard hit countries in the sub Sahara region, but also among young injecting drug users in Russia and Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union as well as in parts of India, China , Thailand and Cambodia. Young people are especially vulnerable to get infected, as they are entering their sexual active life and many of them are not informed how to protect themselves. This Face of AIDS theme is focusing on HIV prevention and advocacy projects around the world, which are targeting young people. Young people have the right to be informed about how to protect themselves either by being abstinent or by practicing safe sex and use condoms. Some of the most interesting youth oriented HIV prevention projects in the world are documented by Face of AIDS film teams

People living With HIV/AIDS

Face of AIDS has since its start in 1987 focused much attention to document the stories and witness accounts of people living with HIV/AIDS all around the world. These personal witness accounts constitutes an integral part of the Face of AIDS documentation strategy. Only by including interviewing people living with HIV/AIDS in the documentation process, Face of AIDS will contribute to give a more overall overview of the history of the global fight of HIV/AIDS. Face of AIDS also want to show how the role of people living with HIV/AIDS step by step has increased in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. To integrate these witness accounts also is an important part in fighting stigma, discrimination and marginalization of people living with HIV/AIDS.

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