BISR Guilt Group present HIV STIGMA: Fig Trees (Greyson, 2009)
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Fig Trees is a Canadian operatic documentary film by John Greyson. It follows South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat and Canadian AIDS activist Tim McCaskell as they fight for access to treatment for HIV. The film was inspired by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's opera Four Saints in Three Acts. It weaves together Zackie Achmat’s lived experience of HIV in South Africa, in the context of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial that AIDS was caused by HIV and that biomedical treatment was necessary for survival, with Tim McCaskell’s life with HIV in Canada, where governmental response was initially slow. Zackie Achmat founded the influential activist group TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) in 1998 and became known for refusing antiretroviral (ARV) treatment until people with HIV who could not afford private healthcare had received treatment. Fig Trees tells the story of Zackie’s ARV strike through the medium of opera and highlights global inequality and the emergence of international activism. As McCaskell has observed, ‘AIDS is like a lens. When you look through this lens you see all the problems of the world magnified’.
For information about the Guilt Group's work, see http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/research/guilt-working-group. BIMI is funded by four schools at Birkbeck: the School of Arts, the School of Law, the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, and the School of Science. The University of Pittsburgh is also a partner and co-funder.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington
Contact phone:
07508859179