AIDS jaagO - Movie Review

At the NCI-Frederick campus, we have a series called "Science in Cinema". First of all they'll show a movie related to science and later an expert in the field will offer discussions on the research concerning it. Marking the AIDS day on Dec 1, they screened today the movie "AIDS jaagO". This is a movie for which funds were provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the film was produced by Mira Nair. The entire movie consists of four short films, three in Hindi and one in kannaDa. People in India might have seen this extraordinarily well-made movie.

The first one is called "Migration" directed by Meera Nair herself. The principal actors are Shiny Ahuja, Irfan Khan, Sammera Reddy and Raima Sen. A migrant worker to the city had intimate relations with a neglected upper class housewife whose husband is gay. He contracts AIDS through this relationship and passes it on to his wife in the village. The story ends with the wife in the village delivering a baby having AIDS too. There is a very clear message urging the use of condoms. This movie may be watched on the youtube here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKTTounvKI&feature=related (migration - 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdIQ8_g7k4&feature=related (migration - 2)

The second short has the title "Blood Brother". The movie is like a suspense thriller! There are two people who have the same name Arjun Dutt. One Arjun Dutt gets the report that he is HIV positive. He abandons his pregnant wife and young son and wanders around taking drugs and drinks. One day he was picked up by a drunk doctor and taken to his hospital. There the doctor tests him for AIDS and says he has no AIDS. He returns home and learns from the testing centre that there is another Arjun Dutt whom he stalks and finally tells him that he has AIDS. This Arjun Dutt is a football coach and already knows about his condition. He says he does not have full blown AIDS, but only HIV positive and was taking medicine to prolong his life. Here is a message that one can prolong life and have a quality life, even if it is shorter. Siddharth, Pawan Malhotra and Ayesha Takia are the actors and Vishal Bhardwaj is the director. The youtube links are -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F4VaxNZp2Y - Blood Brother - 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlTK1zk8xg&NR=1 - Blood Brother - 2

Perhaps the best of the four is the third short film "Positive". Arjun Mathur, Boman Irani and Shabna Azmi are the stars in this movie directed by Farhan Akhtar. It is a story as seen by the son of a philandering photographer father, first as a child and later as a grownup. The son hates his father's ways so much that he runs away to South Africa for his studies. On learning from his mother that the father has AIDS, he returns. At first the only way the father and the son communicate was through the scores in a cricket match. Through his mother he learns there is really no money left. At one place the son asks why she did not leave him. The mother tells that she must have done that long before, but at present she cannot, because the ailing man needs them now most. The father asks for his camera. First the sun bluffs that it was sold, but the next day he takes it to his father. The father could not even hold the camera. The next day he takes a tripod for the camera and helps the father even in arranging the shots. The final shot was that the father was being wheeled into an OT and the son and the mother were standing outside. The gamut of human emotions in this short film is overwhelming. The youtube links are -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evsjTDgPeAU&feature=related - Positive

The final film "prAraMbha" is by Santosh Sivan in Kannada. Saroja Devi, Prabhudeva, Ramya and Jayanti are the actors in this movie. A six-year old boy Kittu stealthily travels in a lorry going to Mysore. On the way the driver drops him and asks him to travel by himself. Inexplicably the driver gets mixed up with the police, a pimp and a prostitute and to extricate himself calls Kittu as his son. Later he learns that Kittu's father is no more and the mother is in Mysore and he stays with his grandmother. From reading a letter dated three years ago, he takes the boy to the mother's house. But there he learns that the mother is in the hospital. In the hospital, the mother was dying and refuses to acknowledge the son. The driver later learns that the boy too was HIV positive like his parents and because of that he was dismissed from the school. The driver talks with the headmistress and tries to bring the awareness that contact and eating together does not result in AIDS. Finally, the boy goes back to school. The background karNATaka violin music is a treat in this short film. The youtube link for this is -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTeG4K3v_hw&feature=related - prAraMbha - 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af3ykAIb-ZI&feature=related - prAraMbha - 2

I hope at the end of it all, you'll have a few tears left still.

Regards! - mOhana