The Impact of Documentary Film in Southern Africa With Regards To HIV AIDS Education

IZIKO SUMMER SCHOOL 2007
IZIKO 17: The Impact Of Documentary Film In Southern Africa With Regards To
HIV/AIDS Education by Dr Susan Levine
Documentary Film Matters:
The Steps for the future media advocacy project in Southern Africa
Susan Levine
Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town
slevine@humanities.uct.ac.za
(021) 448-6127
072 232 8000
October, 2006
Copyright: Susan Levine

Iziko Summer School February 2007
Documentary Film Matters:

The Steps for the Future media advocacy project in Southern Africa
ABSTRACT
Interpretive frameworks in visual media studies suggest that audiences are active agents in the
construction of meaning. As a discipline that emphasizes the value of an interpretive
approach, visual anthropology has much to offer by way of informing media advocacy
programs geared towards HIV/AIDS education. This paper grapples with the conundrum
presented by the agency of audiences to interpret documentary film within the context of the
political imperative to send clear messages about HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention.
The didactic approach to HIV/AIDS in documentary film is that messages about safer sex
practices, for example, should not be open to interpretation. This paper draws on the methods
and theory of visual anthropology to suggest the impossibility of such an agenda. Based on an
impact assessment of a documentary film project called Steps, this paper argues that
audiences do not automatically trust the documentary genre, and that audiences are more
likely to engage in debate when stories about HIV/AIDS convey the complexity of life
choices. The paper argues that documentary films that draw on the wisdom of the African
dilemma tale offer respect to their audiences interpretive abilities and the possibility of
breaking the silence around HIV/AIDS.
Key words: HIV/AIDS, documentary film, audience reception theory, Southern Africa
Introduction
In July 2006 The Encounters Documentary Film Festival in South Africa hosted a
retrospective of films by Jean Rouch. Les matres fous (1955), Petit petit (1969), and
Chronique dun t (1960) were selected for screening, and with support from the French
embassy, Bernard Suruguei and Claude Haffnerii were invited guests. As a former student of
Rouch in 1986 and a current lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Cape Town, I
was also invited to be a discussant. I was struck by the recurrence of questions about
representation. Rather than questions about the anthropological content of the films, the
audience was preoccupied with the inherent manipulations and provocations of the

documentary genre. It appears from this small sample that the crisis of representation has
come of age among popular audiences of documentary film.
While conducting research in Southern Africa on an HIV/AIDS media advocacy project
called Steps for the Future, or Steps Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects - I
noted similar forms of suspicion about the documentary film genre. Simon Chislett, a writer
hired by Steps to assist with producing a facilitators guide for the film series, argues that
creative documentary, particularly that based on personal narratives, is a relatively new
tradition in African filmmaking (2003:11). It is not clear, however, that the suspicion with
which some audience members responded to the documentaries can be attributed to the
newness of the genre in Africa. Certainly the novelty of documentary film in some rural
areas is part of the social field in which messages are decoded, but on the basis of fieldwork
conducted in South Africa, Mozambique and Lesotho, the suspicion of the genre had far more
to do with the broader socio-political context of HIV/AIDS denialism, and the tactical
deployment of disbelief as a rhetorical device to create distance from the illness. Expressed
mistrust of the truthfulness of the documentary genre in this instance, while it resonates with
the questions posed at the Rouch retrospective in Cape Town, reflects the different social
contexts that underpin the social production of audience response.
At the outset I would like to emphasize my concern that popular expressions of disbelief
with regard to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa are often interpreted as the cause
of HIV, rather than the structural inequalities that give rise to infectious disease. Dr. Ntsekhe
from Lesotho argues that, Lesotho will probably only start believing that there is AIDS
after thousands of people, mainly close friends and relatives, have died (Zaba 1995).
Countering this opinion, the data that I collected in 2004 indicates that people express
disbelief about HIV/AIDS as a means to protect themselves from the moral judgement and
social exclusion precipitated by association with the disease. This is not a speculative
statement, but one based on the results of a baseline questionnaire that I administered to all
audience members prior to film screenings. iii While it is not within the scope of this paper to
present the findings in detail, it is critical to note that general knowledge about HIV
transmission in Southern Africa is much higher than public discourse would indicate (Levine
2003).
Visual anthropology shares something with chaos theory-it points to complexity in
audience reception. Interpretive frameworks suggest that audiences are active agents in the
construction of meaning. As a discipline that analyzes the interpretation of visual media
within a model of contingency, it lends itself to an applied visual anthropology. While our
interest in audience agency and interpretation is might appear at odds with the demands of
HIV/AIDS educators, I argue in this paper that the documentary genre might enable viewers
to grapple with complexity and engage with processes of finding a range of resolutions to
grappling with HIV/AIDS in the everyday. Documentary films that offer respect to their
audiences interpretive abilities will begin to break the silence, and move people beyond
current denialist tendencies.
In Lesotho it was not unusual for audience members to express disbelief in HIV/AIDS in
one breath and fear about HIV/AIDS in the next. This paradox of the pandemic signifies the
destructive force of stigma and denial, and the need for creative interventions that encourage
open discussion. In 1995 journalist Faith Zaba wrote,
Talking about the incurable disease, AIDS, to this bartender at a hotel in Maseru, the
capital of Lesotho, his reaction was: "I do not believe there is AIDS in Lesotho.
Actually there is no AIDS here as far as I knowUntil I see someone who is suffering
from AIDS, then I might believe there is a disease like that(Zaba 1995).
I attempt in this paper to situate the mistrust of the documentary films in the Steps for the
Future collection among some audience members, within the broader context of stigma, and
of manipulation by corporates and government officials who spin confusing messages about
HIV/AIDS in a region that urgently needs clear leadership and action. In light of the
innovative attempt to use documentary film to communicate real issues about the HIV/AIDS
pandemic, such mistrust has far reaching consequences. This paper thus aims to contribute to
an emerging literature on audience receptivity in a global context (Askew 2002, Gillespie
2005, Ginsburg et al. 2002). Drawing on research that I conducted while travelling with a
mobile cinema unit in Lesotho, I argue that, unlike the relatively benign implications of
intellectual debates about representation, the mistrust of the documentary genre in this
instance warrants immediate attention.
Background to Steps for the Future
Steps for the Future was the idea of Ikka Vehkalahti, documentary commissioning editor
at YLE Finnish Broadcasting Company, and Don Edkins, a South African documentary film
producer. The collaborative initiative is the largest documentary film project to be undertaken
in Africa, with thirty-seven films, ranging in length from four to seventy-four minutes. The
films were produced for national and international television and for non-broadcast
distribution. During the Southern African International Film and TV Market of 2000
(Sithengi), a call was made for stories that were provocative, humorous and brave - unusual
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stories about life affected by AIDS and which would show the incredible struggle to avert
tragedy (Chislett, Dwarkin, Ntsane, Armien, Levine, Cuff, Edkins 2003:9). Over two
hundred proposals were received. Forty were selected for production. In addition to the
impressive body of films, the Steps for the Future collection includes a facilitators guide
(Chislett et. al. 2002), which forms an intrinsic part of its media advocacy campaign. Chislett
et. al. write that since provoking debate is a primary goal of the project, the guide has been
specifically designed to assist in generating discussion and provide viewers with an
opportunity to express their feelings and needs, and to discuss what they know (2003:9).
While this paper focuses on the methodology I used to conduct research on the audience
reception of films in the Steps collection during the projects outreach program in Lesotho,iv I
must also mention the international acclaim with which the series has been met. Individual
films from the collection, as well as the series as a whole, have won numerous awards at
international festivals (Englehart 2003). The series includes full length and short
documentaries, music videos, and short fictional works. Films from Namibia, Zimbabwe, and
Mozambique apply a method of documentary filmmaking that draws scripts from real life,
which are then acted by the characters themselves. Jane Stadler calls this style of filmmaking
real enactment (2003).v
The research project
In 2002 I was hired to conduct an impact study of the Steps films in Lesotho, South Africa,
and Mozambique. Assisted by my students in medical and visual anthropology at the
University of Cape Town, I implemented a research design that enabled us to generate data
about audience response to the films during facilitated screenings in diverse settings. The sites
included schools, clinics, universities, private homes, church halls, open meadows, police
stations, movie houses, libraries, and hostels. At the same time, Teboho Edkins began to
make a film for Steps about the reception of films in Lesotho. His film, Ask Me, Im Positive,
follows the path of the SeSotho Media mobile cinema unit through rural and urban Lesotho.
The film, like my written impact study (www.steps.co.za), captures the responses of audience
members to films in the Steps series. The film also tells the story of the three film facilitators
who are among the first men in Lesotho to publicly disclose their status.
My early research on Steps was commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Southern
Africa. It focussed on the ways in which the Steps advocacy campaign provided critical
spaces for community members to openly discuss the pandemic (Levine 2003). While my
thoughts on the efficacy of the Steps project have not changed, I focus here on data that
highlights the complex negotiations that took place during the facilitation sessions, and offer
some insight into the underreported cases where the films raised doubt. In a small town
outside Maseru a man asked one of the film facilitators, How do we know the people in the
films are not acting? This question, posed in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, raises
the debate about truth in documentary film to a level that really matters.
In 2003 Peter Biella, the editor of Visual Anthropology Review (VAR), commissioned
papers from media theorists and visual anthropologists for a special edition on Steps. The
papers address different aspects of the films, yet all contributors agree that facilitated
screenings are effective in their ability to provoke emotional responses from audience
members. Lucinda Englehart, in her meticulous paper on the significance of location for the
reception of the films, argues that while audiences are diverse, one constant feature of the
community screenings is that audiences are viewing the film material as part of a group
(2003:75). Community screenings create a forum in which to challenge the punishing
metaphors that people commonly associate with HIV/AIDS. Some sessions highlighted the
stubborn nature of the HIV/AIDS discourse in Southern Africa, which includes the framing of
HIV/AIDS within a moral web of blame and punishment, as well as myth and denialism.
Jane Stadler is the only author in the VAR collection to offer a critique of the project.
She begins in agreement with Englehart when she writes, film engages us physically as well
as intellectually in acts of perception, attention, imagining, perspective taking; in the
experience of empathy and imagination, in resistance or responses to others that are felt
bodily (2003:88). Stadler continues,
The positive aspect of the Steps series results largely from facilitated discussions
following screenings, and the provision of access to further HIV/AIDS related
resources, information and support (2003:86).
She stresses the importance of facilitated screenings, and argues that the open-ended nature of
the films has the potential to leave audience members perplexed about the facts of
transmission, prevention, and treatment if unfacilitated. She finds two films, A Miners Tale
and Dancing on the Edge, especially worrisome in this regard. A Miners Tale, by Nic
Hofmeyr and Gabriel Mondlane, tells the story of Joachim, a migrant labourer who is torn
between his responsibilities for his junior wife in South Africa and his senior wife and family
in Mozambique. When visiting his home village after a long absence, he is also torn between
his understanding of the responsibilities of his HIV status and what traditional society expects
of him. He has to make a choice: he cannot please and protect everybody at the same time.
Joaquims community feel that he must act responsibly and give his wife a child, while he
expresses concern about infecting her.
PHOTO NO. ONE HERE
Caption: Joaquim and his wife in A Miners Tale directed by Nic Hofmeyr and Gabriel
Mondlane. (40 minutes. Mozambique/South Africa) Photo courtesy of Steps for the future
2002
Joaquim contracted HIV while working as a miner in South Africa. The documentary focuses
on his journey home where he must tell his wife that he cannot have unprotected sex for fear
of infecting her. Once home, he consults a traditional healer who tells him that if he loves his
wife he will not infect her, and that it is his responsibility as her husband to make love to his
wife without using a condom. The healers perspective resonates with poster campaigns in
Mozambique that popularise the idea that it is enough to use condoms with part-time lovers.
Hofmeyr and Mondlane allow the conversation between Joaquim and the traditional healer to
unfold without commentary. Much like the African dilemma tale, which leaves listeners with
a choice among alternatives, the audience is asked to negotiate this complex interaction
(Bascom 1975).
Another film, Dancing on the Edge, directed by Karen Boswall (40 min. Mozambique),
explores the contradiction between initiation ceremonies that teach young girls how to please
men sexually without incorporating new messages about safer sex practices.
PHOTO NO. 2 HERE

Caption: Antonietta from Dancing on the Edge directed by Karen Boswall, (Mozambique, 40
mins) Photo courtesy of Steps for the future 2002.
Boswall explores the ways in which traditional gender roles and poverty in rural Mozambique
influence the fight to contain the spread of AIDS in Dancing on the Edge. The central
character of the film is Antonietta, an HIV-positive woman who works as an AIDS counsellor
in the city. The documentary follows Antoniettas journey as she takes her one healthy
daughter to a remote village for an initiation ceremony that teaches initiates how to please
men. After a week of rituals and lessons, her daughter is expected to become a woman and

consequently be put at risk of contracting HIV. Antonietta struggles with the contradictions
between maintaining traditional customs while adapting to the reality of HIV/AIDS.
The film focuses on Antonietta and her three children, two of whom are also living with
HIV. She grapples with the task of advising women in her community not to have children
when they are HIV-positive, even when she understands so well the terrible dilemma
presented by the desire for children. Boswall does not offer resolution. Stadler argues that
without facilitated screenings, such an open-ended film could have disastrous consequences.
Piggybacking on the work of Askew, my first response to Stadler is that audiences are
never the passive recipients of media (Askew 2002). We know that film messages do not
penetrate consciousness in the same way that a hypodermic needle injects serum. The films in
the Steps collection were informed by a very specific notion about the nature of audiences,
namely, that people who make up audiences respond to conflict and to complex scenarios that
resonate with their life experiences. The films are intentionally not didactic. Vehkalahti and
Edkins wanted to use documentary film to transport people beyond the unimaginative
demonstrations of condom use and repetitive information about HIV/AIDS in the media that
has given rise to what Fiona Ross and I called AIDS information fatigue syndrome (Levine
and Ross: 2003). Vehkalahti and Edkins selected stories that they felt would resonate with
the complexity of peoples experiences of HIV/AIDS rather than package stories with easy
messages. HIV/AIDS is implicated in the themes of gender inequality, sexual practice and
sexuality, morality, culture, childhood, poverty, political oppression, racism, fear, stigma,
grief, death, illness, as well as hope. Grappling with these themes constituted the heart of
community discussions and debate, and led in some instances to important boundaries being
crossed. For example, conversations between boys and girls, and between men and women,
and between children and adults signal the positive impact of facilitated screenings. Having
said this, I must admit to my initial reservations about using Dancing on the Edge in the field.
My first impression of the film was that it was irresponsible. I could not understand the lack
of commentary. I felt, like Stadler, that the film would perpetuate confusion. However, once
in the field, it proved to be one of the most powerful for generating discussion among
audiences. Women spoke about the myriad hardships of living with HIV, their heartache
about the risks associated with motherhood, the burden of being sick and the sorrow of having
unwell children.
My second response to Stadler draws on the prose of African dilemma tales. Dilemma
tales are a form of African folktale, and like many other folktales, their content is often
didactic, but their special quality is that they train those who engage in these discussions in
the skills of argumentation and debate(Basom 1975:1). The parallel with films from the
Steps collection highlights the value of open-ended stories about HIV/AIDS in the African
context. Dancing on the Edge shares a quality of story telling with the African dilemma tale
genre that implicitly confers an agency on an audience to engage. Boswall, like the narrators
of dilemma tales, engage audiences in a dialogical mode of communication, and are thus able
to break silences than the more purely didactic communication strategies.
In the preface to William Bascoms book on African dilemma tales, Sol Tax writes,
They are not only intellectual puzzles that sharpen the wits and promote discussion;
they also point out that in human affairs there are no answers, but only difficult
choices which call into play conflicting moral values. That this was known to folk
peoples from time immemorial and forgotten by each new generation in cultures
which lack such story-telling devices is a lesson for modern educators (1975).
Bascom writes that dilemma tales leave audiences with difficult choices that usually involve
discrimination on ethical, moral, or legal grounds (1975:1). Stadler would argue that in the
context of HIV/AIDS, such stories pose ethical dilemmas when lives are at stake. I argue that
the structure of dilemma tales enable discussions that would not otherwise be possible, and, as
Bascom writes, Sometimes the dilemma is resolved by the narrator after his listeners have
argued their conflicting points of view, but often it is not (1975:1). The example of African
dilemma tales reinforces the observation that film audiences are actively engaged in the
creation of meaning, and that facilitators can only guide viewers to reach new understandings
through dialogue. My sense is that this line of enquiry needs far greater attention, and could
provide a fruitful direction for future research.
At a recent conference in Barcelona that focussed on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in
Southern Africa, scholars shed light on the impact of irresponsible governance in South
Africa about the relationship between HIV and AIDS, and the efficacy of anti-retroviral drugs
or traditional medicine in other African countries. On 9 August, 2006 in a powerful public
address delivered on Womens Day in South Africa, political activist Preggs Govender
argued,
Our President, Thabo Mbeki, has yet to give clear, unambiguous leadership on
HIV/AIDS to his Health Minister, to the Government and to the ANC. There can be
no further waste of time and lives in a global world order, dominated by US President
Bushs policy of abstention, anti-abortion and the protection of patent rights of
pharmaceuticals above patient rights to health and life! (2006).

While the lack of political will in South Africa is something that no scholar has yet fully
understood, the impact of HIV/AIDS dissidence and the ambiguous position of the state can
certainly be measured in civil society where confusion, even in the face of illness and death,
continues to inform peoples decisions about disclosure, testing, and treatment. The
relationship between denial and blame, and between shame and silence, contributes to
peoples fears about disclosure, and claiming knowledge about the existence of HIV. My
argument is that some forms of denial create distance from the punitive metaphors associated
with HIV. In Lesotho as well as in South Africa and Mozambique, survey findings indicate
that while people may not understand the particular nature of HIV, they are aware that it
exists. These findings indicate that peoples public assertions of disbelief help them to
establish distance from what they fear.
HIV was first detected in Lesotho in 1986. Since then, the country has experienced a
dramatic escalation in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in common with neighbouring countries in
Southern Africa. Lesotho has the fourth-highest rate of HIV prevalence in the world, having
risen from near 4% in 1993 to 25% in 1999, and to 31% by the end of 2001. Today nearly one
in three Basotho adults aged 15 49 is infected with HIV. Worrying for the country is that the
unemployment rate stands at nearly 50% due to recent retrenchments by the mining industry
in South Africa. Ironically, while retrenchments mean a deepening of poverty and illness, the
spread of HIV is partly linked with migrant mine labour to and from South Africa (USAID
2005).
Towards a Methodology for Audience Research
In exploring the potential of documentary film to address public misconceptions of
HIV/AIDS, methods from visual anthropology are valuable. Asking people about their
response to films is straightforward and effective in generating information about perceptions
and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. In the research design, I sought to explore the ways in
which people mediated audio-visual messages through the lens of their life experience, and
the relationship between individual mediation and larger social processes (Abu Lughod 1999).
The methodology included:
Conducting comparative research in Mozambique, South Africa, and Lesotho

Using a baseline questionnaire to determine peoples understanding of HIV
transmission and treatment
Informing facilitators about the results of the baseline study
Observing question and answer sessions after screenings
Conducting follow-up interviews with audience members both after the screening, and
two weeks after the screening
Tracking the networks through which audience members engaged after the screenings
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Interviewing people who did not see the films, but who benefited from having been
told about the films
Identifying other media sources where audience members heard about HIV, and
analysing the differential impact of these media
Identifying leaders in each community to continue the process of film distribution,
facilitation and counselling
These methods enabled me to consider the negotiations that take place between the encoding
and decoding of messages, and, in particular, the impact of the fields of power and social
relations in which media is embedded. This approach draws directly from current theoretical
work in visual anthropology and applied research: most notably the paradigmatic shifts in
audience reception theory from the hypodermic needle model to post-modernist interpretive
paradigms (Askew, 2002).
Drawing on these theoretical insights, I began to explore what I called the after-life of
film to identify the social networks through which information about the films spread from
audience members outwards to friends, family and community.
Tracking the routes along which stories travelled confirmed the mobility of messages and the
fluidity of interpretations that attends the movement of media messages. Tracking the afterlife of films cements the notion that media messages never enter a person, or a household or
community unfiltered, but are spread, interpreted, and re-interpreted by individuals within
social fields.
Documenting the after-life of films involved identifying audience members who were
willing to be interviewed about their responses. I asked these respondents to keep track of
who they spoke to about the films for a period of two weeks. I then asked the recipients of the
re-telling what messages they understood. By extending the scope of reception theory to
include groups of people who gain information by word of mouth, we can also extend our
methodological approach to exploring the impact of media. The strength of this approach was
that it enabled me to gauge the immediate social impact of the films, although follow-up
research is still needed to guage impact over a significant amount of time.
In Mozambique, Lesotho, and South Africa literature from medical anthropology (Farmer
1992, Helman 1997, Sontag 2002, Weiss 1997), visual anthropology (Collier 1986,
Devereaux 1995, Ginsburg 1995, Ruby 2000), and media anthropology (Askew 2002)
informed the design and implementation of field methods. Abu Lughods critique of the
assumption that media has some innate capacity to persuade audiences uniformly based on
her research on the reception of television soap operas among women in rural Egypt - was
11
especially helpful in formulating research questions (Abu Lughod 2002), and provoking
insight into the failure of the media to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa. For
despite safer sex messages saturating the media in Southern Africa, HIV infection rates are
increasing. The scale of the pandemic provides a clear argument against the hypodermic
needle media model. The ability of people to respond to media messages is shaped by the
structural constraints of economic inequality, patriarchy, sexual violence, stigma and poor
political leadership. It is within the context of these constraints that films in the Steps for the
Future collection form part of a media-advocacy campaign that aims to address the dominant
medias shortcomings, while acknowledging the limits of such an intervention.
However limited, facilitated film screenings drew people together in settings that aimed to
provide safe spaces for community discussion. The strong film characters gave people the
confidence to speak with one another about HIV/AIDS. After one screening in the rural town
of Mohales Hoek, a youth of seventeen named Thabo told me that while he didnt tell his
mother in any detail about the film he saw, he was certain that his mother had heard about the
film. He said, one of the women who had gone to the screening told my mother, and I think
she might have told her what the movies were about. He explained how difficult it is to for
children to speak with their parents about HIV/AIDS, and expressed his concern that his
parents did not have enough information about HIV/AIDS transmission, and asked if
SeSotho Media could host a screening for parents. Another teenage boy named Thato in
Mohales Hoek said,
At home I told my siblings because I think they are old enough to talk about
HIV/AIDS. I also told them I saw people who have AIDS. They didnt believe me so I
told them to go and ask another girl who stays nearby and when they found out that I
wasnt lying they were shocked and they expressed an interest to see these filmsI
also told my mother and she was also amazed that I had actually seen HIV-positive
people. She was interested to know whether these boys had told their parents and how
their parents had reacted, but I told her that even one guys mother appeared in the
movie and she was supportive of her son and this seemed to make her happy.
Thatos school mate Lerato, who was also at the Mohales Hoek screening, told a
friend about Ho Ea Rona because he wanted his friend to know how serious the virus is,
I told my friend who is usually not interested in HIV/AIDS because he says that this
thing doesnt exist. Me and other young people in my village usually organize dramas
which we go around showing to people to educate them about HIV/AIDS but he
doesnt do this with us. When I told him about what we saw the other day when you
came, he showed an interest in seeing the movies and I assured him that the mobile
movie is going to come back to Mohales Hoek and he said I should tell him so that he
can also come and watch these movies. We talked at length about AIDS and when I
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asked him what he would do if he got infected he said he would never get such a
disease and I told him I wish he could have been there to see those guys who are
infected and how they deal with it when they are infectedhe is quite a ladies man,
my friend.
This interview material signifies the ways in which facilitated discussions and debate imbued
audience members with a sense of authority. Being part of debate rather than instructed as
passive audience members instilled a certain confidence in the youths cited above. Such
findings suggest that the suspicion of the truth claims of didactic documentary that are based
on more closed narrative systems are alleviated by less didactic models of communication
that consciously involve audiences in the process of meaning making. The methods outlined
here are intended to provide a guide for visual anthropologists who are interested in the
application of visual anthropology theory, with the hope that the methodology presented can
be used beyond the borders of HIV/AIDS related research.
PHOTO NO. Three HERE

Caption: Scene from the making of Ho Ea Rona directed by Dumisani Phakati. Photograph
courtesy of Steps for the Future 2006.
Ho Ea Rona and Ask Me, Im Postive
Ho Ea Rona, directed by Dumisani Phakathi is a film about four friends who share their
experiences of living with HIV/AIDS while they prepare a meal together. Three of the men
Moalosi Thabane, Thabiso Motsusi and Thabo Rannana have been trained as facilitators for
SeSotho Media, and travel with Ho Ea Rona. Ask Me, Im Positive is the story of how these
three men try to convince audiences that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is real, and to reassure
them that life does not end with a positive HIV test. Their efforts are part of a wider social
movement in Lesotho to educate people about the risks of unprotected sex. I was fortunate in
my capacity as a researcher to join Moalosi, Thabiso, and Thabo as they facilitated screenings
of Ho Ea Rona, and to work alongside filmmaker Teboho Edkins during his preliminary
research for Ask Me, Im Positive.
The government in Lesotho put in place an educational awareness programme in 2000 to
arrest the spread of HIV, but reports indicate that there has not been any significant impact. In
an article on the crisis, reporter Faith Zaba writes, The director of the disease control unit, Dr
Pearl Ntsekhe, conceded government's efforts to promote AIDS awareness have been futile.
We are facing a major task ahead because we have to prove that there is AIDS and that it kills
(Zaba 1995). Ask Me, Im Positive reveals just how hard Moalosi, Thabiso, and Thabo must
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work to convince people that the disease is real, and that they can trust the documentary films
being shown. In a sense, the role of the facilitator is to provide a solution to the dilemma tales
spun in the films, but without reducing the pandemic to a series of easy-to-solve problems.
Using a dilemma-based approach to getting beyond cinema skepticism anticipates the
agency of audiences to interpret documentary film. The impact study, as informed by methods
drawn from visual anthropology, demonstrates that skepticism can be understood as the
catalyst that will introduce genuine debate about how to tackle the challenges related to living
with HIV/AIDS. Films such as Dancing on the Edge and A Miners Tale demonstrate the
value of interpretive approaches to filmmaking. Moving beyond didactic communication
strategies that simply silence the issues further, stories steeped in dilemma may prove to
resolve the paradox presented by the need for determinant outcomes in an interpretive
context.
Photo No. Four Here
Caption: Teboho Edkins filming Ask Me, I'm Positive (48 minutes, Lesotho/ South Africa
2003)
Ask Me, Im Positive is introduced in the Steps brochure as follows:
In a country where almost a third of the people are HIV-positive they are the nucleus
of a tiny group that are living openly with the virus. They are pioneers and publicly
declare their HIV-positive status. They are also film stars and are attractive to women.
The three young men open up in a way seldom seen on screen. This film gets to the
heart of their lives and dilemmas.
To many audience members in Lesotho, Thabiso was known as a former national boxer for
Lesotho. His public disclosure was thus especially potent in the context of his celebrity status.
During an outdoor night screening in a mountain village, a scene that is captured in Ask Me,
Im Positive, Thabiso says to the audience We live in difficult timesIt requires we be open
and honest with each other. A man in the audience replies that he had heard on the radio that
when young people cook condoms, worms come out. Thabiso explains the reaction of the
lubricant to hot water, and tries to impress upon viewers the safety of condoms.
In another scene, the headmaster of a rural school tells Thabo that in Ho Ea Rona he saw
and heard for first time someone disclose an HIV-positive status. At one moment in the film
we hear him say that people do not discuss this fearful and dangerous disease, because we
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are afraid of HIV, and in the next, that the film did not shift his position that HIV/AIDS is a
story. (Ask Me, Im Positive). He said You know, some people talk about Jesus. They make
some drama. I thought this was a drama also (ibid). Thabo asks the headmaster if after
meeting him, and hearing him say that he is HIV-positive in person, that he now believes that
HIV exists. The principal replies Yes, I heard the people say, but ah(ibid). Consistent
with the paradox, the headmaster remained hesitant to express belief, while at the same time
acknowledging this fearful and dangerous disease.
At another screening, also relayed in Ask Me, Im Positive, a man says to Moalosi You
seem very healthy. He continues so I would like to know how you might, is it true, you
have been hired to pretend that you have this disease? Moalosi asks Thabiso to help him
answer the question. Thabiso replies that it would not be possible to disclose an HIV-positive
status if he were negative. He said no money in the world could tempt me.
Ginsburgs (2002) discussion of cultural activism is potentially useful for understanding
the work of SeSotho Media. The concept refers to indigenous and minority peoples who
have begun to take up a range of media in order to talk back to structures that have erased
or distorted their interests and realities (Abu-Lughod, Ginsburg, Larkin 2002:7). One of the
structures that media activists are grappling with is the didacticism of media campaigns that
deepen the silences around HIV/AIDS due to their lack of complexity and audience
participation. Cultural activism in the realm of visual media must take into account that the
decoding of documentary film is as nuanced a process as decoding other media genres that
have received more academic attention, such as soap operas (Abu Lughod 2002).
At the documentary film festival in Cape Town, audience members expressed their
mistrust of the violent images they saw portrayed in Rouchs classic film, Les matres fous
(1955). Without any empirical evidence, some audience members suggested that the
ritual performance was exaggerated and/or staged for Rouch. The audience exercised
its power to refute the truthfulness of the documentary on the grounds that it
contributed to the exotic and savage portrayal of the other in Africa. Their reading of the
film reflects the post-colonial condition, and popular attempts to critique the representation of
others. Similarly, the belief that the films in the Steps collection were fabricated also makes
sense in situ. Clearly, documentary film alone cannot address the spectre of illness and social
suffering in our time. Visual media is however, a powerful and mobile form of
15
communication that has the potential to challenge the misguided socio-political apparatus that
informs public panic about the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa.
Conclusion
Years before the anthropological crisis of representation, Rouch argued that there is no
observation without provocation. He pursued the truth within the context of cinematic
provocation by acknowledging that documentary film produces partial truths, and yet
simultaneously he advocated trust in the possibility of a cinematic truth. The results of the
evaluative research described here suggests the benefit of working with such a contradiction:
the Steps films were able to move people beyond scepticism. Moreover, the Steps project
highlights the ways in which theory in visual anthropology, most notably audience reception
theory, is able to inform research practice, and suggests that there is a critical role for visual
anthropologists in relation to the planning of communications strategies in relation to social
crisis.
The theoretical movement that led to the critique of positivism in anthropology claimed
that the production of truth is always partial, and that social science cannot claim objectivity.
The shift highlighted the implicit power imbalances within representational practice, and thus
created a space for multiple voices and multiple interpretations of reality. Without
undermining the value of this approach, I have tried to highlight the complexity of
interpretive frameworks within the HIV/AIDS context. Documentary films about HIV/AIDS
really matter. It is a time when the documentary genre might enable viewers to grapple with
complexity and engage with processes of finding a range of resolutions. In such ways,
documentary films that draw on the wisdom of the dilemma tale and offer respect to their
audiences interpretive abilities will begin to break the silence.
References
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Culture: Geertz and Beyond. Ortner, Sherry B. ed. Berkeley: University of California.
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Chislett, Simon with Lawrence Dworkin, Alosha Ntsane, Theresa Armien, Susan Levine,
Martin Cuff and Don Edkins.2004.Steps for the future [actually, life is a beautiful thing] An
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Englehart, Lucinda. 2004. Media Activism in the Screening Room: The Significance of
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Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography. University of California Press:
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new terrain. University of California Press: Berkeley.
Preggs Govender 2006. Unpublished paper delivered on Womens Day at Salt River
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Helman, Cecil. 1997. Culture, Health and Illness. An Introduction for Health Professionals.
Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford.
Levine, Susan and Ross, Fiona. 2002. Perception of Attitudes to HIV/AIDS among Young
Adults in Cape Town in Social Dynamics vol. 28, no.1: 1-19 Centre for African Studies,
University of Cape Town: Cape
Levine, Susan. 2004. Documentary Film and HIV/AIDS: New Directions for Applied
Visual Anthropology in Southern Africa. Visual Anthropology Review. Vol.9. nos. 1 and 2:
57-72.
Makoa, Francis K. 2004. AIDS Policy in Lesotho: Implementation and Challenges. Africa
Security Review 13 (1): 1-7.
Nattrass, Nicoli. 2001. Ethics, Economics and AIDS Policy in South Africa. CSSR Working
Paper No. 1.University of Cape Town.
Rouch, Jean. 1974. The Camera and the Man. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual
Communication vol.1, no. 1: 37-44.

17
Ruby, Jay. 1975. Is an ethnographic film a filmic ethnography? Studies in the

Anthropology of Visual Communication. vol. 2, no. 2: 104-11.
Sontag, Susan. 2002. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Penguin Books:
London.
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Filmography
Edkins, Teboho, dir. 2004 Ask Me, Im Positive. Not currently in distribution. Contact Day
Zero Film and Video: Cape Town [http://www.dayzero.co.za/steps/].
Greengrass, Paul 2006 United 93Universal Studios.
Hofmeyr, Nic and Gabriel Mondlane, dirs. 2001 A Miners Tale. 40 minutes. San Francisco:
California Newsreel.
Phakath1960 Chronique dun t.
Steps for the Future films are distributed by: California Newsreel, P.O. Box 2284, South
Burlington, VT 05407
Surugue is a French anthropologist and filmmaker specialising in human development in the context of poverty.
Claude is a French-Congolese director and critic of films. She studied documentary filmmaking at the
Altermedia School in Paris (2002), and directed her first film essay Ko Bongisa Mutu (Arrange your Head) in a
Congolese hair salon in Paris.
iii
Our methodology involved administering baseline questionnaires to audience members prior to film
screenings. Respondents were asked to identify the ways in which HIV transmission occurs. In all research sites
(South Africa, Mozambique and Lesotho) some people thought that anal sex is safer; that using two condoms is
safer than one; that condom lubrication carries the HI-virus, and that insects spread the virus. While only a few
believed that HIV could be transmitted through sweat and urine, I noted general confusion about the risk of
kissing. There was also confusion about parent-to-child transmission, and transmission from mother-to-child
during breast feeding. Training characters from the films to be facilitators worked especially well when
addressing these common misunderstandings.
ii
iv
Commenting on my contribution to the edition in their introduction, Faye Ginsburg and Barbara Abrash
suggest that I describe my research design and methodology more fully (2003). This paper works towards this
aim.
v
The recent release of United 93 shares some of this approach.
Acknowledgements
18
I would like to express my gratitude to the editors, Matthew Durington and Lesley Green, for
their encouragement. A special note of thanks to Lesley Green for her thoughtful suggestions,
challenging questions, and patience.

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Documentary Film Matters:

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PHOTO NO. 2 HERE

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Conducting comparative research in Mozambique, South Africa, and Lesotho

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PHOTO NO. Three HERE

IZIKO SUMMER SCHOOL 2007

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Copyright: Susan Levine

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Ruby, Jay. 1975. Is an ethnographic film a filmic ethnography? Studies in the

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