The producers say: Growing up in the 1980s and 90s we were hammered with terrifying statistics of HIV/AIDS. Thirty years in, we are still learning. What education do youth receive now and why is the youth infection rate still the highest?

We have seen retrospective documentaries about the AIDS crisis and interviews with survivors but what about the positive youth of today? We aim to feature accessible and inspirational individuals and the often rocky road that they've traveled to get here.

Each of the 4 doc subjects share a dynamic perspective on the reality of living positive. Medical, psychological and educational experts will also weigh in to provide up-to-date facts and a historical context to the reality of living positively.

Our GOAL is to now raise additional funds for the feature length film with an aim to release at film festivals around the world and make available to educational institutions and HIV/AIDS organizations.  This means much needed funds for editing, color correction, sound mix, masters, etc. “

The film’s website is here:

Bob Leahy: Thanks for talking to PositiveLite.com. We’ll talk about the film’s connection with Toronto in a minute. Tell me about yourself, first, Daniel. 

Daniel: Thank you too. Sure, for people who don’t know me I’d say I’m a person who doesn’t give up. I think two things have shaped my life; and those two things are acting and running. Both pursuits are about discipline and determination – and both have made me the person I am today.

Bob: You’ve made a film called VOICES which is clearly a labour of love and a work that reflects the passion in your soul.  Where does that passion come from – and can you describe it for us, in a nutshell?

Daniel: In a nutshell, I’m not sure I can do that, Bob, but I’ll try! I’m a British born Asian, with North Indian heritage, and I think that background makes my passion inevitable? Punjabis are naturally passionate and expressive people and when you’re brought up in that kind of an environment it’s going to rub-off on you. There’s no escape.

Also I’m a Sikh; and Sikhism sprang out of a need to defend the community and to fight for justice, and the rights of the people. But Sikhism is also about being compassionate and caring. Defending a community isn’t just about physical fighting.

Bob: You first visited South Africa over ten years ago.  Why did you go and what were your impressions – what did you bring back with you?

Daniel: Correct, yes. I flew to Cape Town over ten years ago, to work for a few months for SABC, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, as part of my media studies. I chose South Africa because the recent history fascinated me; I wanted to see it for myself; to look at it with fresh eyes – because I didn’t believe the clichés.

What I experienced on successive trips was a nation in transition. People on the move, vast spaces and over-powering scenery, often juxtaposed with people squashed into a small area and living in absolute poverty. Then you have the wealth and privilege, and the shopping, and the eating. It’s busy. It’s culturally mixed. The faces of the people tell the story of the nation. I was hooked. It was like a drug.

What I brought back, apart from a stack of photographs that would’ve broken the back of a camel, were incredible and vivid memories; and a burning desire to record what I’d seen and heard in a film. That was the genesis.

Bob:  Now the Toronto International AIDS Conference in 2006 was important for you, wasn’t it?  I was there too, and so was our founder Bran Finch who organized a demonstration at the opening ceremonies. I’m not sure you and I met though. Tell me in what capacity were you there? What was your objective?

Wow – amazing! I wasn’t actually at the conference. What happened was that I heard about the media storm from the Producer of Voices; Simon Constable.

The news shocked me; and I instantly realized – and this was before I knew about or saw any demo. footage – that in this transformational moment there was a potential film. There was a great story. And so in the Autumn of 2006 we began to look into what happened in more depth, and to contact people.

Bob: Now that international conference plays an important in your story.  Do you want to talk about what happened there?

Daniel: Yes, it does – it’s the core of the film. In simple terms what happened was that a spontaneous AIDS activist demo. The South African government sparked savage criticism during his closing ceremony speech, from Stephen Lewis, (pictured below) the out-going UN envoy for AIDS in Africa. That very eloquent speech, and the resulting international media attention, was the turning point in the decade long fight against HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.

Bob: When  he spoke, Stephen Lewis, called  the South African Government’s actions  “wrong, immoral and indefensible”. He was talking about AIDS denialism - promoting ridiculous treatments (or were they cures?) they had put forward, like lemon juice.  Anyway, do you want to talk about that?

Yes. As I said, and as I told him (in Vienna in 2010), Stephen Lewis’s forceful speech was perfectly timed. He spoke for everybody; and he articulated their concerns and anger beautifully. In many ways he could let rip, as he was about to stand down from his post.

AIDS activists and the scientific community were understandably furious about Thabo Mbeki’s total failure to tackle HIV effectively. And it’s as hard now, looking back, as it was at the time, to believe that President Mbeki’s government, and his Minister of Health, ignored proven methods of tackling AIDS; and embraced denialist theories and phantom treatments. Beetroot, garlic and lemon juice, for example. It’s just unbelievable – but it happened!

Without that stand, the  demo and the other actions and interventions of activists in Canada, and, of course, that wonderful speech, who knows where we would be now.

Bob: I think I was at that demo and I took photos; I should dig them out for you. Anyway, what happened next?   When did you decide you wanted to make a film?

Daniel: As I already said, I decided to focus the film I’d always wanted to make on AIDS after the Toronto conference or summit. But films don’t just happen, and you absolutely need evidence, substance and good material.

The end of 2006 and almost all of 2007 was spent researching. We did conduct early interviews with people who were available; such as Sir Bob Geldof and Dr. Robert C. Gallo, and we planned the budget and gathered resources.

Bob: Had you had any experience in filmmaking?

Yes. I studied media at University and created short films there as part of my course work. As I mentioned I worked at SABC and also the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, in the UK. And I personally filmed footage, and some interviews about South Africa, in 2004. So I was fairly experienced in filming and editing.

Bob: What did your plan look like?

Daniel:  Our plan was to fill in the back story and the gaps. By 2007 we already had compelling archive; but what was happening before 2006? And what happened afterwards? We needed to investigate in order for the whole story to be told – even in a sketchy way.

Did that immediately present itself as the way forward? No. For about twelve months we struggled with the angle. Everybody we spoke to had an opinion, but nobody had a solution. It was only at the end of 2009 that it really crystalized. Then in the following year we set off for the second and final filming trip.

Bob: You managed to got footage of the Toronto conference and that demo we talked about and you used it in Voices, I hear.  I’m dying to see it. What’s the footage like?

Daniel: When you see the archive material we were given permission to use, and how we treated it, you won’t believe it. It’s just like you’re there on the stand. You’re there! It’s in front of you. You’re in the moment when the Minister of Health is cornered on the stand and asked to justify her policies by a tenacious female journalist. And we did that to convey the power of the moment to the viewer; and to show ‘people power’ in action. It’s raw. It’s real. It’s history. And there are parallels with the situation in the Arab world and the whole 99% movement.

Bob:  So you commenced filming in 2008?  Tell me about that.

Daniel: Yes, 2008. After spending 2007 researching and planning we gathered some funds. We formed a tight five person team – that was three cameras and two Producers; myself and Simon - and we set-off for an intensive and packed filming trip.

Bob: Where did you go and who did you interview for the film?

Daniel: 12 days in a paragraph? I’ll do my best to summarise it, Bob. But seriously, with the small budget in mind, we based ourselves at a fantastic hostel, in Alexandria, in Johannesburg and used it as a base to travel the country. Support from early partners was invaluable.

First we drove South to Free State with Save The Children. Then we headed East to Pietermaritzburg to look at the work of Fritse Muller. Then we headed for Maseru, the capital of the country of Lesotho; a nation inside of South Africa, to look at the amazing work of ALAFA there – 2,500 kilometres in total! In between there were many interviews. Every day was a working day.

And at this point I have to say that without the early partners it would’ve been a very different trip indeed. As would the 2010 trip.

Bob: Where you happy with the results, the footage from Africa? And how do you go about editing something like that?

That footage from 2008 is great. The purpose of the trip was to really look in-depth at everything -  and we did. We looked at rape, prevention, baby graves, how men are affected, we looked at the good and the bad. There was actually too much footage to use and a lot fell by the way-side – such as the to-camera diaries I recorded every day. But who knows, maybe they’ll make-it onto the DVD?

Compared with 2010 the 2008 trip was a dream; but what we did discover was that we would have to return, because the South African government changed and so did the health policy.

Bob: That’s what I wanted to ask you. I mean that was a time of transition then with a new, more progressive government coming in.  Did that complicate things for you or altered the relevancy of your message in any way?

Daniel: Well, firstly it was – in my opinion – very much a consequence of Toronto. Do I think Mbeki was forced from office because of what happened in Canada in 2006? No. But it was another nail in his coffin. Some would call him a murderer. Not me, I would stop short of that; an interviewee doesn’t. But there’s blood on his hands, definitely. I’ve seen the consequences of his inaction and denial. People died needlessly.

We all like a happy ending – don’t we, Bob. We all like the happy ending and the credits rolling and it all working out. Is there a happy ending if you’re HIV? Maybe you’re happier and alive when you get the treatment you’re entitled to from your government?

There’s a question mark and we don’t know if South Africa can sustain so many on treatment. Will those HIV positive citizens become drug resistant? We don’t know. We have to be hopeful; and we have to give them the opportunity to live and to contribute to society, and not create more orphans. I think the little AIDS orphan girl we follow in Voices, from being very tiny almost to puberty, is symbolic of hope.

Bob: You’ve said the film is about not just voices by answers.  What are the answers?

Daniel: Yes. It’s titled “Voices – Nobody Will Silence Them!”  because eventually the cries were heard; the cries were answered. And the film is also called Voices because of some of the incredible people who have contributed their time, their memories and experiences. Sometimes you just hear audio and there’s a blank screen. It’s a just a statement – just a voice. Something powerful. A memory. People like Gail Johnson; the Mother of the late great Nkosi Johnson, the inspirational Zachie Achmat, and many less famous but equally important persons.

What are the answers? I think Voices shows that we’re all in a position, even in a small way – such as when people buy WAITROSE produce; which then directly helps fund an HIV clinic, in rural Limpopo – to fight HIV/AIDS. I think Voices doesn’t only show things going wrong it often shows what works, and good models. For example: peer to peer education and support, employer responsibility, youth engagement and ‘edutainment’; and real sustainable government intervention.

Bob: You’ve called working on this movie – and we’re talking almost six years - “an obsession, a blessing and a curse”.  Do you want to explain that?

Daniel: I said that? Sure. An obsession because I had to tell the story, people had to know; a blessing because my life has been enriched by the people I’ve met and the places I’ve been; and a curse, because I put so much into the film. In 2009 I was in a life-threatening accident and totally broke because of Voices and nobody would help. But I never stopped believing. I never gave-up – just like the Toronto activists!

Bob: What stage is the film at now?

Daniel: Voices is now completed and in a seventy minute screening version and ready to sell and to be broadcast. We are lining-up what we hope will be high profile screenings; and will continue those right up to World AIDS Day – hopefully one or two a month.

Bob: What does it feel like now you are almost there?

Daniel: A relief! Certainly the work isn’t over. But we’re confident, and above all, if we can screen or broadcast in South Africa, and Canada, we’ll be very pleased indeed. I have to tell you that many South Africans do not know to-this-day what happened in Toronto in 2006. Canadians may also need reminding?

Canada is very close to my heart – as I know it well, and have been there and have family there. Obviously, without Canada and the Toronto conference six years ago, and people like Dr. Mark Wainberg, sub-Saharan Africans might still be not be getting the ARV treatment they so badly need to stay alive; and could still be dying from AIDS because of denialism and inaction

Bob: When do you think people will be able to get a look at it?

Daniel: Bob I would love to give more details but we’re currently in discussions. If people can follow us on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/voiceshivaids and check our tweets then they will see information as the weeks and months pass. But international broadcast is absolutely our aim. The world must know the story and the mistakes must never be repeated.

Bob:  Daniel, I want to thank you again for talking with us. You’ve given us the trailer to look, let’s look at it now.

Daniel Larson Sidhu is an actor turned film-maker based in the United Kingdom. He established Blue Rain Productions in 2008 with the aim of creating films that would assist people to better understand others and the world. Completed in 2011, VOICES is Daniel and BRP's debut feature documentary.

Find out more about VOICES on their website here. 

Follow VOICES on twitter @VOICESHIVAIDS

The word mafia means “a bold man.”

The idea that we might need a ‘Gay’ Mafia emerged from a group of grassroots activists who were trying to imagine new ways to engage communities of men who have sex with men. Institutions that support and inform gay men’s health and wellness have certain limitations, especially since we rely on the public purse. When I envisioned a video blog from a bathhouse with performers eroticizing safer sex negotiation, funders graciously turned down the idea. After all, we are not here to offend Joe Q. Public. Being polite and sanitizing sex however, has been indicative of much of our HIV/STD prevention history and the Gay Mafia felt like it was time for something bolder . . . and more risk-tolerant. So we partnered up with the Gay Mafia, an emerging group of man lovin’ man activists, to step in to help Victoria’s gay men to re-imagine who we can be in today’s climate of political and financial uncertainty.

For our first outing we brought a select group together to watch the extraordinary film, “We Were Here: the AIDS Years in San Francisco.” (Director David Weissman is seen below right.) The documentary depicts gay men and their allies rallying to the call, by all means necessary, to counteract and respond to an unimaginable crisis. In the early 80’s, governments turned their backs on us (as they still do in many parts of the world). It was local activism that changed the world. While under siege, men and women, many of them already sick, declared, “GLBT and HIV+ lives matter.”

The San Francisco model of public-private partnership for prevention inspired successful programs elsewhere and showed the world how loving we can be. Members of Act Up! fought the social order of the day and showed the world how fierce we can be. Angry, community-loving AIDS activists put queer lives on the world map.

So earlier this year the Gay Mafia printed souvenir tickets that read, Gay Mafia presents…We Were Here. On the back of each ticket, against a smudge of 80’s gritty grey, written in sparkling pink, are the words, “We’re recruiting.” We know we need to connect younger queer men with their elders, those who lived through the nightmare years. As an educational release, we were only allowed 50 seats. 105 more people wanted to come see the film. A third of the audience were men over fifty, a third were men under thirty and the rest were women, mostly lesbian allies who knew their herstory was also woven into the story of AIDS.

International AIDS educator, Ed Wolf, one of the five subjects of the film (see previous article) introduced the film and hosted the Q&A afterwards. We were curious to see how viewers would react. Can the genius of this 2011 documentary break through the seal of frozen grief to help today’s generation reclaim the treasure of who we are as a ferociously loving LBGTQ2S movement?

When the film ended and the lights came up, one long-term survivor stood and shared his gratitude for the many men who risked their lives in the early clinical HIV treatment clinical trials. Viewers acknowledged the role of women in the crisis and how they longed for a deeper re-connection with the womyn’s community. Andrew Shopland, a 24-year-old practicum student with our prevention program gave Ed Wolf a gift and said, “Thank you for touching our lives, for being here tonight and for all the work you have done over the decades. Having seen the film and heard you speak I have a much richer understanding of what happened.” Then he added, “I still don’t know if I’ll ever really understand what it was like.” To which Ed responded, “You don’t need to completely understand. Thank God you don’t have to have that experience in your body. The important thing is that you are here to pass our history on to. That is what you need to know.”

Do today’s young queer men and women need to more intimately know about the AIDS crisis? When nearly a quarter of those infected don’t yet know it, when 1 out of every 129 Torontonians now live with HIV, I say, ‘Hell, yes!’ However, when I look back on how Boomers were silently impacted by their parent’s experiences of WWII, I begin to comprehend why smart, caring men like Andrew and his cohort will never fully get the hugeness and horror of the AIDS epidemic. At 45, I feel as if I am just waking up. Population trauma takes generations to heal.

Perhaps the best we can do is draw lines of connection and communication between the past and present. My work as a middle-aged cocksucker is to make cultural and historical connections and in-roads to more resilient sex positive futures. As the GLBT2SQ movement steers toward mainstream assimilation, the need to reclaim our queer history feels acute and urgent. Now I’ve begun to see, like the Russian dolls of old, where yesterday’s stories fit inside todays’.

I’ve begun interviewing older and younger men about their experience of the documentary, asking them how the themes in the film interconnect with their lives today? Here’s one of the interviews.

Recruit: Dan, age 29

Daniel is bi-curious. He’s never had sex with a man. He sat alone through the film. Afterwards he signed up for future events and then contacted me to make more of a connection to the queer community.

I asked him what made him want to see WWH?

“I knew it was something that happened that you know you should be part of…. I knew that it was a huge event in our recent history.  I know that I have a personal connection to it - that I can empathize to a certain degree with the people who were there. Parts of my sexuality or otherwise my politics have been on the fringe. I have an idea of what it means to be pushed out of society. Not being there, not knowing what it must have been to have a vast part of your community dying, without knowing what the cause of it was, I can’t imagine how hard that would have been. I have a gay uncle living in SF, estranged from the family, he was there….

I also came to the film to explore my identity. Knowing history, all of our cultural history, of what happened to our brother and sisters…we learn about the world war, why not about this very tragic event?”

How did the film impact you?

“Hearing these guys stories, the feeling of loss, oh my god, that people can have lost so much. What would it have been like to have your friends and your partners dying all around you? I just felt like fucking crying. The film helped me appreciate the politics around the struggles queer people have gone through over time, like the Stonewall riots, how queer people have been purposefully ignored.”

From your perspective, what was the ‘invitation’ of the film?

“Recognize this! The film spoke to the desire for recognition. We invite you to come here to this story because it is important. The fucking resilience, it was a wild time, incredibly tragic, but we made it through and we’re doing good.  It gave me hope. Ed talked about today’s kids committing suicide, their feelings of despair, is this directly linked? Resilience and hope go together and for generations we have stood up against oppression to the benefit of everyone.”

At the end of the interview we hugged and promised to keep in touch. I walked away uplifted. And yet doubt lingered. I wondered if those of us who survived the AIDS years could really inspire a new generation of queer activists? Then I thought of We Were Here and said to myself, “Bet your well-lubed, condom-loving ass we can.” But how? By being bold. By telling our tales. By actively listening to one another and showing interest in who we are we change the plot line. Let’s make that our gay agenda. 

As we build more generational bridges, we may discern what is needed today and what work is yet to be finished from ‘way back when.’ The past holds secrets necessary to the health of our queer future. As Daniel and I parted, I felt such gratitude for the power of sharing stories. Next time I see him, I’ll tell him that he would make a great addition to Vitoria’s growing gay mafia. I stepped out into the night sky and thought for the first time, “Survival is sexy.”

“Of all the cinematic explorations of the AIDS crisis, not one is more heartbreaking and inspiring than WE WERE HERE…  The humility, wisdom and cumulative sorrow expressed lend the film a glow of spirituality and infuse it with grace… ONE OF THE TOP TEN FILMS OF THE YEAR.”  Stephen Holden, New York Times

The Gay Mafia presents…[episode one]

Once in awhile a film changes lives. Does it also have the potential to transform a culture? I’m going to advocate that the feature length documentary We Were Here: the AIDS years in San Francisco could evolve the health and well being of Western queer culture. The challenge? No one wants to watch an AIDS film. The solution? Show it anywhere, anyhow, anyway.

Upon arrival, each of the unsuspecting 160 university students received a ‘sex pack’ complete with condom, lube and safer sex information. Their course explores creativity from multiple perspectives and disciplines. The theme for the evening’s lecture included ‘creative resistance’ and ‘finding your tribe’. As their instructor, I threw out the night’s curriculum and introduced these fresh faced youth to my dear friend and mentor, international AIDS activist and educator Ed Wolf (right, with Robert Birch). We turned on the documentary and let history do the teaching.

We Were Here documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed.  It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could, and should, offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support. - From the film’s web-site.

Ed, one of the five subjects of the film, We Were Here, was there - at the epicenter of the disease in 1981. Fag fresh to the Bay area he stepped into the maw of the bio-cultural leviathan of G.R.I.D., ‘the gay cancer’, HIV/AIDS. And yet, in the most horrific of days he found his calling: helping hundreds and hundreds die with dignity; consoling friends, lovers and family members by the thousands - all the while navigating his own gay life and the pain of his own personal losses. From volunteer to peer counselor to global educator introducing new prevention tools, Ed has survived and thrived through more than most of us can possibly comprehend. How? By loving our community while taking care of his own health. To fully understand what that means we would have to experience a form of empathy most of us have been highly de-sensitized towards feeling.

A few years ago the SF chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence bestowed upon Ed the title of Saint Sequoia. He responds to this and many acknowledgments with a, “Thank you” and an unveiled invitation to the rest of us, “I answered an ad in the local paper asking for volunteers.”

David Weisman, writer and director of WWH, describes his film as a love letter to San Francisco. He lays out a potent vision of gay male SF history, one that reminds us that for a single brief decade gay men were sexually liberated. For these primarily straight identified students (we anonymously polled their sexual identity at the beginning of the semester) this feature length documentary introduced them to a vibrant, erotically gregarious and politically active queer culture. It also provided visual evidence to the nightmare of near genocide of gay men, including terrifying images of kaposi sarcoma, wasting, and blindness of young men their own age. 

Since showing the class excerpts from the film, many students expressed their gratitude. All of them said, “I had no idea. Our limited sex education tells us nothing of the history of AIDS.” They had never seen men en masse as nurturers, let alone gay men so deeply loving each other. They never knew about the countless women who helped us. Not one of them knew that because of our queer AIDS Ancestors universal health care practices are now available for them today. How could these students have possibly known that thousands of activists, artists, teachers and cultural change agents were ignored by the politicians of the day, wiped out, and in many cases erased from historical memory?

So many young people may never perceive queer folks as powerful, loving, creative warriors of community spirit. How could they when so many of us, even those of us who are Poz today, don’t really proudly claim or even know our own near history, either?

Our society has yet to seriously ask, “What are the cold hard consequences of AIDS on today’s global culture?” Who dares to imagine how the world would have been different today? To do so means to awaken a grief only those who have experienced war or cultural genocide could remotely understand. People do, however, want to understand.

After showing the film I was told by one female student that she brought her boyfriend to class last week. His immediate response was, “I will never make a homophobic comment ever again.” While appreciative of the sentimen,t we know for this young man the work of social justice has only just begun.

Another straight identified journalist student requested an interview of me, his queer Poz professor, for publication because he wanted to “correct his ignorance of AIDS.” After an hour and a half I left him in my office to watch the Men’s Wellness Program’s 30th year on-line retrospective of HIV/AIDS made by a caring 18 year old female and new ally. He thanked me repeatedly and left with tears in his eyes.

Ed said this class represents the first group to watch the film that did not know what they were about to see. Imagine what the world would be like if young people knew the real queer history of HIV/AIDS? Think how the stories of those young terrified fags and their many loved ones who sacrificed so much, who took on the established order and created a new paradigm, could inspire a new generation! Having seen such a profound template of youth power, how might the youth of 2012 step out, fight back and change the world for the better today? This movie needs to be seen.

[Episode 2 explores two other local viewings of the film We Were Here, introduces the Gay Mafia and asks the question, “How do we mobilize today’s young queer men?”]

Visuals: www.wewereherefilm.com

http://edwolf.net/about/ for photo of Ed Wolf

Film shown to students about tribe: How to start a movement:

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

I watch a unhealthy number and variety of movies. Weekends are my movie territory and it helps that there is a Blockbuster along the street and a large multi-screen not far across town. The main staple of my movie feasts tends to be those gripping, and sometimes real-life based or historical, dramas and thrillers – essentially thinking movies to place the context of the human condition into perspective. I also, with a smirkful confession, watch rubbish too – it helps me wind down. There’s nothing like an implausible Bond movie or action flick or hyped summer “blockbuster” to help forget about the working week – maybe these are a guilty pleasure. The only thing I hold an utter aversion to is American comedy (apologies to those Americans who are reading this) but there is something about this genre which means it largely cannot ever compare with British or European comedy, especially black comedy, due to a totally devoid lack of irony, entendre and deprecation which doesn’t feature in the culture.

However, I digress. This week I decided to watch a movie I would not otherwise normally have chosen. I paid my fee and rented Contagion. A “virus” movie, akin to others that have gone before it – Outbreak, 28 days later and a whole host of zombie and infection movies of varying watchability. The differentiator is supposed to be that Contagion focuses on the scientific and epidemiological aspects of a pandemic and at the very least nobody rises from the dead and bites anyone. Now, even before my life began the forever-ever dance with HIV, I just tended to avoid these movies, many were simply horror fests that would bore you to tears and were about as scary as attending a Christian book club and others were largely ill-informed so that they surely should be stocked on the fantasy genre aisle. What is largely common with all of these movies though is that they continue to portray a world of divisiveness between those who are infected and those who are not and this has never sat well with me on a number of levels for a number of reasons.

Contagion in itself has been largely praised for its epidemiological realism and that you can’t really argue with, although the exploration of the science is limited. However, this is still a movie which contains lines such as “She touched my cup” in reference to a co-worker who has died from an encephalitic virus of unknown origin to a husband screaming “Did he give this to us?” in relation to the discovery that his wife’s lover is also “infected” - a sexual connotation to the spread of disease is always an emotive one, as we know well. In fact there were so many stigmatic similarities to the virus in this movie, eventually named MEV-1 (can you see the rhyme?), that you could be forgiven for thinking that the past 30 years of the HIV pandemic had been condensed into a time frame of about 140 days and played out in a two hour Hollywood movie but with a great big void in the middle of the story. Actually some of the social interaction scenes are reminiscent of Philadelphia which incidentally is about to turn 20 years old.

At first glance, with my virally enhanced head on, the question raised by all of this is “is it all simply dire cliché”? or in fact, do I need to give makers of the film credit for the fact that it is actually art imitating life – we know that many of these utterances and reactions were real and many continue to be. But then we would move into the realm of life imitating art – how many of the movies continue to propagate the myths, fears and uncertainties surrounding disease and illness and an anthropological view of the world which is so distorted to the point that it becomes believed and therefore real?

But, if this is really art imitating life, there is missing from Contagion a great swathe of human endurance and realism which I cannot accept does not feature. We never see the collective outrage of the infected and the affected, we never see the care and sacrifice of loved ones, and we never see the overcoming of super-human challenges in the pursuit of hope when presented with absurd adversity – stealing your neighbour’s shotgun to protect your daughter from the infected unfortunately does not count. Instead we see a rapid, co-ordinated and slick Governmental response, a scientific unrealism which allows a vaccine to be created, produced and distributed in less than six months and health agencies winning the day and patting themselves on the back. And the rest of the world? Aside from the 26 million who die, they all live happily ever after. Of course, not forgetting poor Gwyneth Paltrow who loses her head, or at least part of it, for the second time since it was mailed home in se7en.  

There are many positive aspects to this film, but unfortunately they cannot outweigh the feeling that there is a whole lot more missing to the real-life version of this story and that the real story is inside that void.

Go see it and draw your own conclusion.

So I am writing from my sickbed... or rather my sick couch.  I forget at times that even though strong, I am not infallible.

When the body says rest, you rest.  It’s just that simple.  But it doesn’t have to be a depressing time.

Here is my favourite pick of five movies to watch when down for the day!

5 - Priscilla Queen of the Desert 

It’s fun.  It’s camp.  And I can go in and out of consciousness and still know all the lines and can see the picture with my eyes closed.

4- Kung-Fu Panda I & II

Ok.  So this is two movies, not one.  I normally can’t stand Jack Black, but as a pudgy panda who gets banged around, he’s charming.  Normally sequences of these sort of cartoons are not the greatest, but watching them back-to-back it feels just right!

3- Horrible Bosses  

Hilarious!  Loved it the first time, and still doesn’t get old.  The little guy, Charlie Day, steals many of the scenes he’s in.  Some great actors play parts in unconventional roles. 

2- Date Night 

They just make me laugh.  I have no idea what the story is most times as I lose track of the plot through waves of headaches or nausea but it still doesn’t seem to matter.  I hope Tina Fey and Steve Carrel do a sequel or another movie together.  Plus Mark Wahlberg – still as hot as ever!  I seem to always pay attention when he’s on – ain’t that funny! ;)

1-     The Italian Job  

Ok.  It’s not a funny one.  But stuff goes fast and there’s Jason Statham, Ed Norton....and OMG Mark Wahlberg!!  LOL!  It’s just occurring to me now I think I have a thing for him when I’m sick.  How funny! 

Again the plot seems of little importance but everything is moving and stealing and cunning and blowing up. I just don’t seem to care.  That and the mini car chase reminds me of the time I got that ticket from the police for using a rental mini Cooper and... Hmm... perhaps I should save that story for another day!

Now if they were to come out with a comedy movie with Mark Wahlberg playing a shirtless nurse, I’m sure I’d feel better in no time!