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‘Steps for the Future Films’ Project
Extracted from The Newsletter of the International Video Fair Trust
May, 2004

Video Fair has always screened educational and entertaining films for its targeted audience. These films are also works of fiction, for example, films like Neria, More Time, and Yellow Card. Video Fair has a new and exciting project up its sleeve for its audiences. ‘(Social Transformations Empowerment Projects) Steps for the Future' project features real life stories of people who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. 'Steps films' feature people who decided to disclose their status to the world. All those featured in these films are from SADC countries like South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The STEPS and Information Dissemination programme will cover eight southern African countries, which are Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique. Video Fair has always screened educational and entertaining films for its targeted audience. These films are also works of fiction, for example, films like Neria, More Time, and Yellow Card. Video Fair has a new and exciting project up its sleeve for its audiences. ‘(Social Transformations Empowerment Projects) Steps for the Future’ project features real life stories of people who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. 'Steps films' feature people who decided to disclose their status to the world.

All those featured in these films are from SADC countries like South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The STEPS and Information Dissemination programme will cover eight southern African countries, which are Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi ,South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique.

The year 2004 will be focusing in the three countries, which IVF is already operating in, which are Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. The following year 2005 the programme will go to South Africa and Mozambique and lastly Angola, Botswana and Namibia in 2006. IVF will run 22 screenings per month within a 10 months period. STEPS films will be screened for an hour, followed by a 30 minutes drama and then discussion with the audience and a local NGO HIV and AIDS expert. Two hundred information kits will be handed out to lucky audience members after discussions. Dubbings have been made into local languages for all eight countries.

Screenings ‘Steps For The Future Films’ project

Mother to Child
40 minutes - South Africa
This is a realistic and moving film about an event that touches everybody. More than 12 000 mothers a year give birth in the Chris Hani Hospital in Johannesburg. Nearly 50% are HIV positive. The film shows the struggle of one woman after she finds out she is HIV positive and how access to treatment can save the life of her baby. Also featured are the tasks and accompanying feelings of the hospital staff around her: a doctor, nurse, counselor and a cleaner.

A Miner's Tale
40 minutes - South Africa/Mozambique
Joachim is a migrant labourer who is torn between his responsibilities for his young wife and family in Mozambique and risking being accused of being a failure in that respect. When visiting his home village after a long absence, he is also torn between his understanding of the responsibilities of his HIV positive status and what traditional society expects of him as a man. He has to make a choice: he cannot please and protect everybody at the same time. What will he choose?

A Fighting Spirit
26 minutes - Zimbabwe
A national hero turns a public enemy when he confesses his tragic secret. Gilbert Josamu, Zimbabwean middleweight boxing champion, discovered he was HIV positive at the height of his career, but forged his medical certificates and continued to box. Just months before he died Josamu finally confessed to having lived with HIV for 14 years. The public outrage that followed forced him into his toughest fight yet, the battle for acceptance. A story told by those who are still alive.

The Ball
5 minutes-Mozambique
There are different ways of using condoms-making a soccer ball is one of them. In a small village in Mozambique, little boys are great consumers of condoms. They are cheap and with two of them, one inside the other, plus some rags, plastic bags and strings, the kids can make a tough football within ten minutes.

True Friends
3x7 minutes – Mozambique
Three short films using handmade animal puppets to dramatise different issues around HIV/AIDS, making them easily accessible to young children.

Ndodii
13 minutes, Zimbabwe
Issues around inheritance have a new twist these days in rural Zimbabwe. When Mai Tawanda is instructed by the elders to marry her dead husband's brother, she protects. " My husband, your brother, died of AIDS. I am HIV positive." The elders, saying she has bewitched her late husband, dismiss her claims, thus revealing the problem of denial in rural communities in Southern Africa.

Master positive
8 minutes, Namibia
At a social services centre in Katatura Township, a group of HIV positive Namibians have begun making lowcost papier-mache coffins. We follow one of the project members as he strives through humour and a positive outlook to overcome the social and personal consequences of the virus.

A Red Ribbon Around My House
26 minutes -South Africa
A mother and a daughter are in a crisis because of their different responses to AIDS. Pinky, flamboyant and loud, lets everyone know she is HIV positive. Ntombi is battling to be just like everyone else. But her mother's courageous and touching refusal to be quiet or passive in the face of AIDS, sets them both apart.

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