April 2004 WCRP-HIVAN Forum:?“Deadly Myths??” Screening and Panel Discussion

Note for your diary: ?“Deadly Myths??” will be screened at the 25th International Film Festival to be held in Durban, June 2004. For more information, visit: http:// www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/ Durban_International_Film_Festival.htm. On 15 April 2004, HIVAN and the World Conference of Religion and Peace (WCRP) co-hosted a screening of a film produced in the form of a docu-drama by social anthropologist and HIVAN Deputy Director of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Jill Kruger, entitled ?“Deadly Myths??”.

Note for your diary: ?“Deadly Myths??” will be screened at the 25th International Film Festival to be held in Durban, June 2004. For more information, visit: http:// www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/ Durban_International_Film_Festival.htm. On 15 April 2004, HIVAN and the World Conference of Religion and Peace (WCRP) co-hosted a screening of a film produced in the form of a docu-drama by social anthropologist and HIVAN Deputy Director of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Jill Kruger, entitled ?“Deadly Myths??”.

This film, in attempting to address the challenge of breaking through the ignorance and prejudice surrounding HIV/AIDS, journalises a range of myths and misperceptions relating to the epidemic (for example, that HIV only affects certain communities).

Introducing the concept and methodology that informed the creation of the film, Jill Kruger explained that anthropology concerns itself with people?’s lived experiences, in local, regional and global communities. These experiences are personal ?– not merely behaviours or actions, but through the active self engaging in an experience and shaping an action, while also feeling and reflecting on this engagement and the action.

"We can never know any other person?’s experiences fully. We filter communications about experiences in terms of our own referents from our own experience,?” she said. ?“In anthropological texts, we structure our own experiences of others?’ narratives, and their experiences are largely filtered out. In our search for the general, we seek to avoid being misled by the unique, but ethnographers readily acknowledge that most accepted genres of anthropological expression - the field notes, the diaries, the lectures and the publications - do not manage to portray the complex richness of our lived experience of fieldwork.?”

?“Segments of biography or personal narrative give fleeting glimpses of the units of experience on which anthropological theories are founded,?” she continued. ?“A documentary film is an attempt to emphasise human experience in a very much more direct way than is possible in published texts within what we call, the anthropology of experience.?”

Jill paid tribute to those who had agreed to participate in the documentary, saying that the film consolidates and interprets the expressions of a variety of structured units of personal experience which people had shared with immense generosity. ?“It therefore contains a broad range of human narrative,?” she said. ?“Writing in 1986, Edward Brüner reminds us that we create these units of experience and meaning from the continuity of life: ?‘Every telling is an arbitrary imposition of meaning on the flow of memory, in that we highlight some causes and discount others, [so that] every telling is interpretive.?’?”

Jill recounted how she and the film?’s director, Ramadam Suleman, embarked on a challenging interpretive experience of their own, as they sought, during the process of editing the film, to encapsulate the various contributions into a cohesive whole. ?“This documentary film was never conceptualised as an art form purely to convey social messaging,?” she concluded. ?“Rather, it was conceptualised as a vehicle to create new social messaging, since, in the process of viewing it, people interpret and respond to it in terms of their own, personal referents.?”

After the film was screened, Rabbi Michael Standfield, of the Durban Progressive Hebrew Congregation said: ?“This epidemic of AIDS is a serious problem. We?’re all citizens of this country, whatever religion we are, and we?’re all part and parcel of it. From my point of view as a Rabbi, I ask for G-d?’s blessing upon this meeting and that you go with your God, whoever he, or she or it may be.?”

Three HIVAN ethnographic researchers explained their contribution to the film: Anam Nyembezi was working in mainly African local communities with traditional healers, and Hema Ramduth had researched groundwork for the documentary around HIV/AIDS-related stigma amongst residents in Chatsworth, an Indian community in Durban and Phumzile Ndlovu, who works with home-based carers in the uThukhela region of KwaZulu-Natal. These three researchers worked directly with the film crew during filming.

The researchers sat on a discussion panel with specialists who had appeared on screen: Patience Koloko, (President of the SA Traditional Healers?’ Association), Professor Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala (Head of UKZN?’s School of Anthropology), Professor Jerry Coovadia, (HIVAN?’s Biomedical Science Director), and Matron Beryl Naidoo from Chatsworth Hospice.

Rabbi Standfield led the panelists?’ interaction with the audience around their responses to the issues raised in the film regarding prevailing beliefs about and experiences of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

The first question posed came from a medical student from Holland, who acknowledged that although his response might well have been influenced by his remoteness from the South African contextual experience of the epidemic, he had been somewhat bewildered by the portrayal of the sangoma figure who weaves through the docu-drama. He perceived this to be a clownish figure, and an inappropriate one, given the magnitude of the epidemic and its tragic impact. He was also perturbed that some of the views and beliefs that people communicated seemed almost too absurd to believe. He expressed doubt that the film would be taken seriously as an informative documentary by overseas audiences, and wanted to know whether it was intended primarily for local or overseas distribution.

With regard to the prospect of marketing the film overseas, Jill replied that the primary intention was to target it towards local audiences, so as to stimulate debate around HIV and AIDS. ?“There?’s a lot of denial underlying the stigma and discrimination related to the epidemic, so our aim is to roll out the showing of the film in communities such as those it portrays.?”

Patience Koloko, a practising traditional healer who had appeared in the film, explained that the behaviour of the seemingly ?“comic?” sangoma figure in question was not typical of most traditional healers, because he was an actor playing the part of a sangoma. ?“This kind of behaviour would confuse and frighten a patient, and such fear can give rise to discrimination against traditional healers.?” Jill confirmed that there were two traditional healers featured in the film, one being Patience Koloko, a genuine healer. The other portrayal reflects popular mis-conceptions of the dramatic role of traditional healers and the ambiguous nature of their messaging. The portrayal is by an actor from a theatre group based in Gauteng, which conducts popular and successful HIV/AIDS prevention programmes.

The full report can be accessed on the righthand side of this page