RAYS OF LIGHT
Sunshine Cinema went on a road trip to show solarpowered movies to young people in HIV-affected areas. Sydelle Willow Smith recalls an emotional week
Sunshine Cinema’s mobile movies give solar-powered hope to HIV-affected youngsters
SUNSHINE Cinema travelled from Cape Town to Durban with our solarpowered mobile cinema housed in our Volkswagen Crafter van. With support from the Open Society Foundation’s public health programme, we screened films to young people in communities most affected by HIV-related issues. We went to Qunu, Cato Manor, Wentworth, Umlazi and KwaMashu, ending at the 21st International Aids Conference in Durban.
The films aimed to generate discussion about HIV activism and particularly the pioneering work done by women globally to spread awareness and understanding.
ON the last day of the conference, we celebrated the end of our road trip in Umhlanga and found ourselves in a sea of yellow, green and black in Durban’s Gateway mall — we’d wandered into an ANC ward party. To a soundtrack of gqom throbbing from the dance floor, I fell into conversation with two young women in military garb — a paramedic and a soldier. I told them about the work Sunshine Cinema had been doing and they told me about their own work in a male-dominated landscape, particularly about the issue of “blessers”, typically older men who prey on young girls, particularly poor girls, bribing them for sex with mobile phones, handbags and empty promises.
They indicated an older, welldressed man standing nearby, so I went to speak to him. He told me all women are prostitutes these days and the downfall of society came when women started believing they should be treated equally to men. Pointing to a nearby woman he whispered in my ear: “You see that one, when I sleep with her, she demands R1 000 in the morning.”
THINKING back on the exhilarating and moving week we’d had, I was disappointed but not particularly surprised by the “blesser’s” remarks. We still have some way to go when it comes to changing prevailing attitudes about sexual equality. The conference in Durban and the films we screened around it were essential in creating discussion.
At every screening, women decried the manipulation of young girls facing harsh economic realities who are lured into transactional relationships with older men. This is related to HIV: the power imbalance and promise of financial support often prohibits women from demanding protection and refusing “flesh on flesh”.
Again and again, it’s painfully obvious that some bodies matter more than others. Even as the global rate of infection decreases, the rate of infection for young, black South African women does not. How can it when young women’s bodies become a means of social capital, their only means of survival in societies where
SUNSHINE Cinema held screenings in partnership with local community centres. Our theme was “Speaking to be Heard” and our flagship film was Nothing Without Us: The Women Who Will End Aids ,a documentary directed by Harriet Hirshorn. This film examines the pivotal roles played by female activists in North America, Nigeria and Burundi in fighting for equal access to antiretrovirals. After the screening, theatre group Yamanje of Assitej performed a Zulu piece based on the film.
We also screened short films from our production company Makhulu, made in partnership with the International Aids Society and the Children’s Radio Foundation, giving a voice to HIVaffected young people from South Africa, Zambia and Zanzibar.
EVERYWHERE we were thanked for representing powerful female voices. Women told us they didn’t expect to see their own struggles with patriarchy, stigma and access to prevention mirrored in the US — that they had always viewed HIV/Aids as an African issue. However, as Charlize Theron highlighted in her powerful keynote address at the conference, HIV/Aids does not discriminate. People do.