Telling the truth about AIDS

Towards the middle of A Closer Walk, Robert Bilheimer's strong documentary on the global AIDS epidemic, the filmmaker visits the Tambaram sanitorium in Chennai. It is a harrowing scene in which the patients lie in silence, awaiting death.

"It was an important moment for me because I realised that all of these patients are going to be sent home," Bilheimer says from his office in upstate New York. "Give them some aspirin, tell them a few things and send them home to die. There is no treatment at all.

"In the women's ward, they have three patients per bed and they rotate every eight hours. The women only come when they are finished because often in Indian society, even if both husband and wife have AIDS, the man comes home and lies down, while the woman cooks until she cannot stand up. Then they bring her to the hospital and she dies."

As Glenn Close, who narrates the film along with Will Smith, says, "There are few visitors. When a woman or girl gets AIDS in India, she is deemed to be worthless, a non-person."

Bilheimer's film is the first important work capturing the global human dimension of the AIDS epidemic. In addition to India, the film was shot in Uganda, South Africa, Ukraine, Haiti and the United States. 

A Closer Walk features AIDS authorities like Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, Dr Suniti Solomon, India's leading AIDS expert, Jeffrey Sachs, professor of health policy and management at Columbia University, Dr Paul Farmer, of Partners in Health, and Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS and assistant-secretary general of the UN. The film also includes interviews with celebrities well-known for their involvement in social causes, including the Dalai Lama (right) and Bono.

Close says in the beginning of the film, "This is the story about the way the world is."

"This is true," Bilheimer says. "Of course it is about AIDS, but in the end, it is about the world we live in. The way we live in this world, who we are, what we are and what our responsibility is towards others."

Or, as Bono puts it in the film, "A divide between the haves and the have-nots is not acceptable. And writing off 90 per cent of the planet, we will be judged by God for this."

A Closer Walk will have its US television premiere on Thursday, August 31 on PBS.  The film has been broadcast on South African television and was also shown at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Plans are afoot to broadcast it on December 1 on Doordarshan (even though the film is critical of the Indian government) and CCTV (China).

"If there is a pivotal issue, from my personal point of view, about where we are going with this epidemic, you have look at most of India," Bilheimer, pictured in the Chennai hospital ward, says. The director has been visiting India once or twice a year for the past five years. "It became very apparent to me that a very large number of the normally contributing factors for vulnerability to HIV and the spread of AIDS were concentrated in India."

He feels the factors are not just the stigma associated with the disease but the role of women in the poorer areas, within and outside of urban centres, lack of universal testing and the huge population of so-called monogamous heterosexual men, having casual sex with other men. "This is where AIDS lives," he says.

"India is a great democracy, but in this case, as far as AIDS goes, it is tyranny," he adds. "Because AIDS gets lost.  There is a lot of talking in India, but there is not a lot of walking."

The country with most success against AIDS is Brazil, says Bilheimer. Uganda was held like a model in the early days, although the situation is regressing now. And in Ukraine, there is a lot of denial. 

Anatoliy Viyevskiy, a Ukrainian doctor, says in the film, "(The) Ukrainian people, they will not perceive this virus. This is for some people somewhere out there, but not for Ukrainians. So, we are some kind of biological strangers on Earth. But you know this is simply stupid."

Bilheimer adds, "I found India's response to AIDS no better, and in some ways, quite a bit worse than the norm. And the norm is denial."

Last year, when Bilheimer screened A Closer Walk in New Delhi, the film received a standing ovation from an international audience, including a lot of Indians. Later, an Indian man walked up to the director and said, "This is the first time I have seen an Indian shed a tear for an African life."

"In some ways it was a very odd statement, but in other ways it was a good statement," Bilheimer says.