by MATTHEW HAYS

When one thinks of AIDS and film, high-profile movies like Philadelphia and Longtime Companion spring to mind. But the Toronto-based Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival has rounded up a series of lesser known, recent documentary films that, regardless, illuminate important issues surrounding the epidemic.

Timed for World AIDS Day (Dec. 1), the films screen this weekend. Among them will be Their Brothers’ Keepers: Orphaned by AIDS, Catherine Mullins’s heart-wrenching portrait of several Zambian families in which children have had to take over parental roles, given that their actual parents have died of AIDS complications. The children leading these families valiantly stare down life-threatening struggles, including lack of water, food, reliable health care and housing. Not only must these children face lives of extreme poverty and hardship, they must do so without their parents.

In The Bicycle, filmmaker Katerina Cizek profiles Pax Chingawale, a man who travels from house to house in southern Malawi, Africa, attempting to fight ignorance around AIDS and HIV, one household at a time. And in Peter Jordan’s Stand Like Still Living, the filmmaker also puts a human face on the epidemic: he examines the lives of two people from a small village in Botswana. One suffers from chest pains and ventures to get a blood test to find out if he’s got HIV. The other, an HIV+ woman, tries to figure out what life will be like for her newborn child, whose HIV status remains unknown.

With Beating the Drum Loudly, director John D. Liu analyses the current situation facing the HIV-infected community in Uganda, the country where HIV and AIDS was first discovered. Effective prevention measures have made a difference here, but those already infected are still faced with a steep uphill battle. New drugs and community-based responses to the epidemic offer some hope. In Positively Naked, Arlene Donnelly Nelson’s new doc, the filmmaker interviews a broad range of models at one of photographer Spencer Tunick’s group nude shoots.

Peter Chappell’s feature-length doc The Origin of AIDS delves into the myriad theories surrounding where the epidemic actually began. After 20 years of hype, anxiety and media hysteria around the disease, this doc points out that we still don’t know precisely how it all started and offers up some possibilities. The film puts forth the contentious theory that when scientists tried to rid the world of polio, they may have inadvertently caused the creation of HIV.

And in On the Frontline, Kasper Bisgaard looks at the situation in Zambia, where one in every five people are HIV+. In the Zambian capital of Lusaka, Sister Leonia and her team work tirelessly to fight the disease and its impact on the community. Bisgaard shows us the harsh reality faced in Zambia, as well as the beauty of this incredible response to the hardship and suffering.

The Planet in Focus Fest screens Dec. 1–3 at the NFB (1564 St-Denis). Suggested donation $5, to benefit the Stephen Lewis Foundation. For more info: (514) 496-6887 OR www.planetinfocus.org

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