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To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. “AIDS is killing about 8000 plus people a day – think of it as two and a half attacks on the Twin Towers A DAY ……” BBC interview As Project Manager for the Willie Mwale Film Foundation, I find myself also the founder and producer for the independent film company Ambush Productions Ltd. Ambush Productions was initially set up in Lusaka in 1999 in order to try and kick start an almost non-existent local industry and to give an visual voice to the people of Zambia. “CHOKA!” – Get Lost!” was Ambush Productions’ first feature documentary, led by the award winning Danish director Kasper Bisgaard.
We wanted to work with the vulnerable children in Lusaka. In order to get close to them and gain their confidence and trust, we decided on the unusual approach of a very extended research period followed by an exceptionally long shoot. At that time there were already over 75,000 street-children in Zambia, with a huge number clustered on the streets of Lusaka, mostly single or double AIDS orphans. We sought advice from the NGO’s, as well as the children and their communities, about the best approach to the subject, and then spent over two years in production.
The Willie Mwale Film Foundation, named in honor of the boy featured in “Choka!—Get Lost!”, is the charitable wing of Ambush Productions. The Willie Mwale Film Foundation has raised money for the featured children and sponsors them with food, housing and education. We are now raising money for our second feature documentary. No matter which way we turn in Zambia we are confronted with HIV/AIDS. There is no one here who has not lost or is losing a loved one. Information is available about prevention and care but still hundreds of people are infected every day. With vast seas of statistics and the enormity of the impact on society, a general malaise seems to have fallen over both developed country donors and our own besieged community. Where can the questions be raised and debated better and more widely then from the very front line of the pandemic? An HIV/AIDS Hospice. Our film will be shot from and with the people of a local hospice. This is an incredible place run by remarkable people. It was the first hospice in the area and now provides services to 98,000 people. It has twenty bedded, 24-hour care inpatient facilities, out patients, provides training and skill sharing, counseling and home based care services reaching 400 people plus a month.
THE FILM METHODOLOGY We will weave a unique methodology into our pre production with staff, patients, volunteers, children all taking part. Following a workshop, those who have taken part will be able to experiment with video and digital stills recording themselves, friends, situations, home based care and so on. They will later be monitored and assisted and their “diary” footage will be logged into the computer for later use if they so desire. In this way we hope to acclimatize the Hospice to the intrusion of a camera crew and spark interest in the film and its process within the community. The film will be a punch-packing exploration of the true impact of HIV. We will not shy away from the brutality of the virus, its terrible affect on both minds and bodies. Neither will we shy away from the strength and spiritual resilience that can be found at the Hospice. There is joy and wisdom too at the Hospice, not just fear and death. The film will go to festivals and to cinemas and to television networks. It will also be always a tool for focusing funds for the hospice itself and others like it in Zambia. We hope it will be a revelatory, educational tool for all to use for many, many years.
To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. |
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