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Fokus on AIDS - Review
David Basckin. 07 December 2003. Sunday Tribune Television Guide. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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Andre Smith and Ida Jooste were recent finalists in the Vodacom Journalist Awards. Part of the Fokus (SABC2) team, their work has been concentrated on the AIDS epidemic. As a result of their exposure to the sufferers and victims of this disease over an extended period of time, theirs is a singular vision.
Jooste is a truly polylingual intellectual whose interviewing style and directorial view bring a lucidity to her work, informed at all times by strong and appropriate emotion. In close parallel, Smith?’s camera-work and cutting rhythms give his films a distinct look, sufficiently different to crack the standard videographic cliches?’, yet always accessible in their revelation of truth and feeling.
All these adjectives, qualities, characterisations and virtues came together on the AIDS Day edition of Fokus, resulting in a short documentary film of intensity, rigour and purpose. That a film like this should appear on Fokus is no surprise: Fokus is and continues to be the best news commentary show available, with a strongly directed editorial style that sticks to the truth, avoiding at all times tabloid sensation and soundbyte triviality.
The Jooste-Smith documentary, which richly deserves a repeat broadcast, told three stories. One was about the disease, revealing the realities so often obscured by raw statistics. Here were real people, of all ages, struggling with its impact. Many of the images were hard to look at, brief, uninvasive, but shocking.
So many homes have become hospices in which the poor nurse the bedridden. With breadwinners dead or dying, only the grannies are left to nurture the children as they begin to die in their terrible turn. Assisting them is the growing army of voluntary health workers and AIDS counsellors, who move within their communities, providing ideas and support.
Such is the level of poverty that some people aspire to the disease, knowing that it brings a disability grant of R700 a month. The new job of the counsellors is to dissuade the poor from embracing this pitiful idea.
Finally, there?’s the ongoing story of McCord?’s Hospital and the intensity of the AIDS work done there. At a time when the health system flounders under dubious leadership, while the private system continues to show a deep and undivided love for its shareholders, McCord?’s shows the way a real hospital works.
And all this in one 11-minute documentary. Catch Fokus tonight (07 December 2003) on SABC2 at 7.30 p.m. |
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