 Living with AIDS
(On the Frontlines of AIDS)
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'Africa's fatal sexual culture spreads AIDS' - The Observer
"An extraordinary documentary that gets deep into the heart of the issue… A moving documentary and a hugely important piece of journalism"
Anushka Asthana, Observer, 26.06.05
"If you needed reminding that television can sometimes rub our noses in the dirt for reasons other than titillation then you only hand to watch Dispatches: Living with AIDS, a stunning report by the film-maker, Sorious Samura"
Tom Sutcliffe, Independent, 28.06.05
"Faced with the same material, many documentaries might have wanted to grab us by the lapels and shout into our faces. Here the stories we heard and Samura’s humane reactions to them were allowed to speak for themselves… Samura’s resolute refusal to offer false hope did sometimes make the programme difficult to watch. For the same reason, though, it always felt powerfully and uncomfortably true."
James Walton, Telegraph, 28.06.05
"Few films paint such a vivid, evocative and stripped-bare portrait as this film. It is so graphic, you can almost smell the place… and it stinks… Thoughtful and intelligent"
Terry Ramsey, Evening Standard, 27.06.05
In the third of the 'Living with' series, Sorious Samura works as an orderly in hospital in Zambia , where the majority of the patients are HIV positive. Confronted daily with death, he describes his workplace as being like a frontline in a war zone. The staff work under horrendous conditions where protective gloves are a luxury and shrouds for the dead are stained with the blood of previous corpses.
In this film, Samura exposes the untold story of AIDS – how poverty and the complex nature of African culture and sexuality are hampering efforts to eradicate this horrifying disease.
He meets characters like Joshua and Lawson who continue to practice unprotected sex despite their HIV positive status, and Precious and Nancy, AIDS orphans who fend for themselves in a world where sex "flesh to flesh" pays well and offers an easy short term solution.
Samura also meets heroines such as Bitonda, who at sixteen is in sole charge of her dying 14 year old brother, an AIDS orphaned cousin as well as her own child.
After one month, Samura is left with the realisation that for the war against HIV in Africa to be won, poverty, ignorance and African sexual attitudes have to be tackled head on.
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