Pandemic: Facing AIDS
Directed by Rory Kennedy
Produced by Rory Kennedy & Liz Garbus
Edited by Kate Amend, A.C.E
Directors of Photography, Nick Doob and Tom Hurwitz
Written by Mark Bailey
Original Music by Miriam Cutler
Co-Producer, Jed Rothstein
Line Producer, Julie Gaither
Project Directors, Rory Kennedy and Nan Richardson
For HBO:
Supervising Producer, Nancy Abraham
Executive Producer, Sheila Nevins
PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS is a multi-faceted project that takes a unique look at the AIDS epidemic, melding intimate personal stories with a global perspective. The PANDEMIC project includes a feature-length documentary, five-part series, 42-minute educational version, twenty-minute policy makers' version, five PSAs, a website, a promotional CD, a traveling photo exhibition, a photography book, and educational materials.
About PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS:
The scope of the global AIDS epidemic is staggering. Over the last twenty years, the disease has killed nearly 22 million people. In 2001 alone, 5 million people were newly infected with HIV. Behind these statistics lie the stories of millions of people, each of whom must face the challenges of AIDS in their own way. PANDEMIC follows the lives of five people living with AIDS in different regions of the world, and uses their experiences to put faces behind the numbers, and to connect audiences with the heartache and triumph living under the extreme conditions that AIDS enforces.
AIDS tests people in ways that they would never expect and forces them to engineer minor miracles in the face of doom:
In India, we watch as a former truck driver, debilitated by AIDS, gives strength to his family and his village, and helps face down the prejudice that AIDS engenders. Even more selflessly, he sacrifices his own health to give his pregnant wife his medications.
Our Russian story focuses on a young couple whose use of IV drugs has left them infected with HIV and struggling with their parents for the right to raise their three-year old son. We watch them cope with the epidemic in a country where the true scale of the devastation is just beginning to sink in.
At a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, we get a glimpse of the pain that end-stage AIDS patients suffer by following one former prostitute on her quest to return to her village and die with dignity.
In Uganda, we see how one committed woman uses the power of song to lead AIDS orphans into a better life after their parents have succumbed to the disease.
Finally, our Brazilian story follows a young, gay man who, at 27, takes advantage of Brazil's free HAART therapy and emerges from his first bout with AIDS illness to try and rebuild his health and get back to living.
PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS premiered at the Barcelona World AIDS Conference in July of 2002, was shown at the United Nations on World AIDS Day in November, 2002, and premiered as a five-part series on HBO in June, 2003.
PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS materials are available through our partners at Umbrage Editions. Visit www.umbragebooks.com to order VHS copies of the PANDEMIC feature, five-part series, educational version, or policy makers' version; PANDEMIC educational kits; the PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS book; or for information about the PANDEMIC photo exhibition.
Aditional information about the PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS five-part series is also available on HBO's website.