I recently got to watch the much plebiscited AIDS Jaago series and have really liked the end-results.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the AIDS Jaago project consists of four short dramatic films targeted at delivering a blow to the contemporary AIDS crisis in India. They are touring festivals at the moment and the series are receiving a wide berth for distribution so hopefully, you might have an opportunity to view them in your respective countries.
Set in four specific and realistic indian backgrounds, the movies are as follows:
Migration by Mira Nair
AIDS from a class-level perspective.
A link is made between urban and rural ways of thinking in india through the dissemination of characters from different backgrounds merging into adult affairs.
What was lacking in the movie was mostly the subtle ways in which the homosexual relationship between a closeted husband and his boyfriend is portrayed. It struck me more as gay cultural stereotyping than anything otherwise meant. However I also felt that Mira Nair has managed to depict eastern orthodoxy poignantly.
Blood Brothers by Vishal Bhardwaj
AIDS from the individual's perspective.
Siddharth, the main character gets a positive HIV diagnosis after having indulged in an affair and faces step-by-step a gradual descent into depression. It is only then that he realises what truly matters in life.
I thought the messages sent back to society were beautifully crafted and this was a point of view on India that I had scarce knowledge of.
Prararambha (The Beginning) by Santosh Sivan
AIDS from the point of view of our significant others.
The movie portrays the interaction between a truck driver and a little boy whose mother left him after discovering she had been tested positive.
This one left a tingling sensation in me. The ultimate message was that hope pervades in the face of adversity.
Positive by Farhan Akhtar
AIDS and its impact on family life.
Once more relative to an affair outside of the bonds of marriage, a womaniser finds himself contracting HIV +. The movie then lays the focus on the family's coping strategies.
I've liked the directing style and I think it must have been hard to try and show the importance of family support during an AIDS crisis in a period of twelve minutes or so.[hr]