News (Updated
December 12, 2010)
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By Liu Wei
Gu Changwei's feature film
about AIDS comes with a documentary about the real roles of six HIV-positive
people who worked on the movie.
Fiction is not powerful
enough for director Gu Changwei, whose new feature film, Life is a Miracle, is
the subject of Together, a documentary about AIDS patients. Six HIV-positive
people joined the film crew for Miracle, a bitter romance about two youngsters
affected by the fatal disease. Zhang Ziyi and Aaron Kwok lead the cast.
Gu invited the
HIV-positive crew members to make the film more convincing, and to emphasize his
team's anti-discriminatory attitude to those afflicted with the disease. Before
filming, Gu's wife Jiang Wenli, who also stars in the film, suggested he make a
documentary at the same time. Jiang has worked as an ambassador for AIDS
prevention for eight years.
"You will see in the
documentary how people interact with the patients," Gu tells China Daily.
It was a tough task,
however, for director Zhao Liang, who directed the documentary under Gu's
supervision, to find six HIV-positive people who were willing to be filmed.
Zhao started with online
communities for the group. He talked to them and won their trust before making
the invitation. Still, most of them refused him.
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"My mother would
collapse if she saw me on the screen," one HIV-positive person told Zhao.
"Nobody will talk to me if they know I am an HIV carrier," said
another.
Zhao talked to about 60
AIDS patients before six finally agreed to work on the set, or star in the film.
Even so, half of them insisted their faces were covered.
Among the three who did
agree to have their faces shown was 12-year-old Hu Zetao, a student at Red
Ribbon School, an institute for 16 children with AIDS in
The scene was captured in
Together. Gu told Hu to recall his experiences of being bullied by people and
cry as loudly as he could. He immediately did so and could not stop for many
minutes.
Hu's teacher Liu Qian
worked on the set, too, taking care of the child. Liu has been HIV-positive for
10 years, after an illegal blood transfusion. To her 16 students, the pretty
woman is like a loving mother.
The middle-aged Xia, from
"If my face can
change people's attitudes toward the disease even a bit, then let it be
uncovered," he says in the documentary.
Xia's biggest dream is to
find a stable job in
Xia had to leave the set
prematurely because he became ill. Before he left he went to every crew and cast
member to say goodbye, including Zhang and Kwok.
"I thank
everybody," he says in the documentary, "because nobody here
discriminated against me".
After three months of
shooting, Hu Zetao's family now eat with him. Liu works at the school, taking
care of her children, while Xia is still looking for a job.
Living with HIV-positive
people affected the crew. At the beginning of the documentary, one crew member
was too scared to open his mouth when he knew he was sitting beside an HIV
patient. At the film's end he said he now knows the importance of respect.
Not all were equally
courageous, though. Two crew members quit the film when they knew HIV carriers
were working with them.
Jiang Wenli and other
actors tried to build trust between the team members. Zhang Ziyi's niece and
Jiang's children visited the set and played happily with Hu Zetao.
"Respect is not about
vain speech, it is action. When our colleagues saw my children play with the
patients, they learned something," Jiang says.
Several medical experts
stayed with the crew, too, providing knowledge of the disease and preventative
measures.
When the documentary
wrapped up, director Zhao Liang took an HIV test.
"I did that to tell
everybody, it is totally OK to befriend these patients if you know how the
disease spreads," he says. "They are not guilty, they need our love
and respect."
The 84-minute documentary
has been regularly screened for free at
Dec 9, 2010
By Katy Migiro
NAIROBI (Reuters) -
Hundreds of Kenyans living with HIV protested outside EU offices in Nairobi on
Thursday against a deal they say may block access to cheap life-saving AIDS
drugs.
The European Union and
Under the proposed deal,
patent terms would be extended beyond 20 years while data exclusivity provisions
would force Indian manufacturers to carry out their own clinical trials instead
of using existing data.
This would delay
registration of generic ARVs for several years, according to the U.N.
"Unless the attacks
by the European Commission on the future of generic production in
Generic ARVs cost about
$137 per person per year, a fraction of the price of patented ARVs used to treat
the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and are sold by Western
pharmaceutical companies.
Only a third of the 14.6
million people around the world who need ARVs are currently receiving them. More
than 80 percent of those using them, as well as patients in developing
countries, get their drugs from
"We depend on these
drugs from
The placard-waving
protestors presented a petition to Eric van der Linden, the EU's head of
delegation in
"I am not a
magician," he said.
HIV positive Osongo said
he had been suffering from tuberculosis, pneumonia and typhoid, until six years
ago, when he started on the life-enhancing drugs.
"If they (generic
ARVs) are not available, the first thing that would happen is me to go back down
with the disease and maybe even die," he said.
By Michael Thurston (AFP)
10 December, 2010
LOS
ANGELES — A clinic for actors in the multi-billion-dollar US porn movie
industry was ordered closed, one day after an HIV positive actor blasted it for
failing to help him properly.
The Adult Industry Medical
Healthcare Foundation (AIM) lacked the correct license to operate as a medical
clinic, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The announcement came
after 24-year-old porn actor Derrick Burts spoke for the first time since his
HIV positive test, carried out at the AIM clinic in October, triggered a
suspension of porn film production.
"By state law, all
facilities that provide medical services are regulated by the state to ensure
that they meet appropriate standards to provide medical care," local health
officials said in a statement.
"AIM does not have a
license to operate a medical clinic. Today's cease-and-desist order means that
AIM must stop providing medical services until it has obtained the appropriate
license from the state."
There was no immediate
reaction from AIM to the closure order, although it claimed Burts's comments
were "not truthful and are self-serving," saying he was being
"manipulated" by another AIDS group.
At least four major film
producers suspended filming in October while AIM performed tests on all the
actor's known partners. Production resumed a few weeks later.
The HIV case was the first
in over a year in the industry, and comes six years after up to 14 actors tested
HIV positive, forcing several film firms to close.
Burts, who had only been
acting in porn movies for seven months, lashed out at industry bosses and the
AIM clinic in particular, saying they had left him for a month and a half
without treatment.
"People who are
behind the industry, the big shots, they need to come up with a system that
works, that protects their performers," he told an emotional press
conference, speaking for the first time since the scare erupted.
He also called for
mandatory condoms in all porn movies, saying regular testing was not enough to
protect performers from contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or the
HIV virus, which leads to AIDS.
The order to close the
clinic was welcomed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has slammed AIM for
its slow response to the AIDS threat in the porn industry.
"After years of total
inaction,
"Now it's time for
the county to go after the producers themselves who have been operating with
impunity outside the law.
"Public health
officials must shut down every permitted adult film shoot in
AIM -- still referring to
Burts as "Patient Zeta" out of concern for patient confidentiality --
said it offered him "counseling... test results and information and
direction regarding resources and treatment."
"Any statements made
by Patient Zeta which portray AIM as not providing appropriate and proper
services are not truthful and are self-serving," it added.
AIM also claimed
Weinstein's group "has a history of aggressive and hostile actions against
AIM, and the most distressing aspect of this situation is that Patient Zeta is
simply being manipulated for AHF's own purposes and in furtherance of their
agenda."
(AFP) – 6 December, 2010
KUALA
LUMPUR
The Malaysian AIDS Council
reportedly said that women in northern Kelantan state, which is ruled by the
hardline Islamic party PAS, top the infection lists in
"Many of the women
were afflicted with the disease as their husbands had engaged the services of
prostitutes," council president Mohamed Zaman Khan told national news
agency Bernama.
"For example,
Kelantanese men often go to Sungai Golok and after engaging with prostitutes,
they return to their wives and pass on the disease," he said, referring to
the notorious Thai town near the Malaysian border.
Bernama quoted Health
Department deputy director-general Hasan Abdul Rahman as telling the World AIDS
Day event Sunday that the infection rate in Kelantan was four times higher than
the national average.
Despite its small
population of 1.6 million, Kelantan had the highest number of women affected by
HIV-AIDS at 1,211 cases, followed by Johor with 1,124 in a population of 3.4
million.
The Malaysian AIDS Council
was not immediately able to confirm the report.
