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Indian American film director Mira Nair has joined India's top
directors in a project to show short films on the impact of the
Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) before the screening of
Bollywood blockbusters.
Nair said she got the idea of this collaboration of filmmakers
to raise awareness about the disease from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation which is funding the project, according to USINFO,
a US government website.
A foundation representative contacted Nair and presented "the
startling statistic that if we don't control what's happening in
India in terms of the lack of awareness and stigma and other things
associated with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)," the
magnitude of India's AIDS epidemic could equal that of Africa in a
few years.
The director, who now lives in Uganda, knows the problem firsthand.
Figures of a 2006 UN study show that 72 percent of the 2.6 million
global AIDS deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa with devastating
socio-economic impact.
She wants to use the "immense power" of Indian cinema to "wake
people up about AIDS." She calls project AIDS Jaago, or "awake" in
Hindi.
"I proposed that I would get together the most cutting-edge,
commercial, populist film directors from different regions of
India, who would each use iconic movie stars who are recognized in
our country, who would each make a dramatic tale of 15 minutes in
length," she said.
Nair assigned one AIDS topic to each director, "and then they had
the freedom to do what they needed to do," she said. Nair herself
is well known and respected for her directorial ventures like
"Salaam Bombay", "Monsoon Wedding" and the most recent, "The
Namesake".
She assembled impressive talent for the four films. "I chose the
directors I most admire," she told USINFO. Director Vishal
Bhardwaj's film "Blood Brothers" is about the psychological impact
of the infection and "living positively with it," Nair said.
Santosh Sivan, a South Indian director who received international
acclaim for his 1998 film "The Terrorist", focuses on the stigma of
AIDS with the true story of a small boy who was barred from school
because his parents were HIV positive.
Farhan Akhtar, "a wunderkind of the new Bollywood," currently is
shooting a film about the need to be open about the subject of sex
education and HIV/AIDS.
Nair herself directed a film called "Migration", "about the virus
as the great class leveller that links rural, urban, upper class,
working class, migrant labour," she said.
Actors like Irfan Khan, Siddharth and South Indian idol Prabhu Deva
have been cast in the films. Up and coming stars Samira Reddy,
Shiney Ahuja and Reema Sen also appear in the movies.
Nair said she hopes that by the end of the year, the films will be
screened in cinema halls in India and elsewhere. "They can really
translate anywhere, China, Africa, anywhere," she said, adding, "If
these four films succeed, then next year we can get another four
directors" to do another series.
Indo-Asian News Service
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