AIDS jaago

film research file

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Record #

FRL-83972

Object Name

film research file

Media Title, Year of Release

AIDS jaago, 2007

Other Title(s)

Alternate Title Blood brothers

Alternate Title Positive

Alternate Title AIDS awake

Alternate Title Migration

Alternate Title Prarambha

Original Title AIDS jaago

Series Title AIDS jaago

Series Title AIDS awake

Director(s)

Film Category

omnibus film

Country

India; USA

Language

English

Translation

Format

colour

Playback/Region

Measurements

Duration 4x15 min.

Publishing Info.

Details

Genre

Restrictions?

ADDITIONAL PRODUCTION INFORMATION

Producer Nair, Mira

DESCRIPTION

TIFF NOTE

India boasts the biggest, most passionate movie audience in the world. It is also home to about 2.5 million people living with HIV. Now, for the first time, India has harnessed the dynamic force of its film industry to address the HIV/AIDS crisis. AIDS JaaGo means "AIDS Awake," and this project is a vibrant wake-up call designed to put the power of Indian moviemaking behind a critical message. Working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) enlisted three colleagues to produce short films that bust open stereotypes and put forward new ways of thinking about the disease. In this Mavericks presentation, directors Nair, Santosh Sivan, Vishal Bharadwaj and Farhan Akhtar will join Ashok Alexander from Avahan (the Gates Foundation's Indian HIV/AIDS initiative) to screen the films and discuss the urgent issues they raise. Can popular entertainment shift attitudes? Can Bollywood beat back AIDS? In Nair's short film Migration, Shiney Ahuja plays a rural labourer who leaves his wife for work in Mumbai, where he gets mixed up in a dangerous triangle with a frustrated wife, performed by Sameera Reddy, and her closeted husband, played by Irfan Khan. Sivan (also premiering Before the Rains at this year's Festival) directs South Indian superstar Prabhu Deva in Prarambha, about a truck driver who helps a boy on a journey to find his HIV-positive mother. Bharadwaj (Maqbool, Omkara) presents Blood Brothers, a clever thriller about a man reacting to his HIV diagnosis, featuring Rang De Basanti star Siddharth. And blockbuster director Akhtar (Dil Chahta Hai, Don) tells the story of a young boy and his parents coping with the impact of AIDS in Positive, with Boman Irani, Shabana Azmi and Arjun Mathur. In India, each short AIDS JaaGo film will screen before Bollywood blockbusters. All four will also be packaged together for broadcast on national television. Mavericks audiences will get a first look at these films and a chance to join the filmmakers in a thought-provoking conversation about the scope of HIV/AIDS in India and the power of the movies to change minds.

FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING HISTORY

2007 - 32nd Toronto International Film Festival

Mavericks

TIFF CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAMMING HISTORY

TIFF YEAR-ROUND PROGRAMMING HISTORY

SUBJECTS

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