About the Film
In Sub-Saharan Africa today, AIDS is not only a vast humanitarian tragedy, but also a dire threat to regional stability. As death rates from AIDS exceed the rate at which teachers, doctors, and security forces can be trained and maintained, whole nations may begin to collapse. Perhaps the only benefit from Angola’s long civil war is that the country now has one of the lowest HIV infection rates in Southern Africa. Strategically important because of its oil reserves, Angola is now coping with the problems of peace. As refugees and soldiers return home and transportation and trade resume, the spread of AIDS looms. In response to this new enemy the government has once again rallied its military forces. WIDE ANGLE explores the role of the military, the only functioning arm of the state, in its bold attempt to combat the AIDS pandemic. The challenges it faces offer an arresting portrait of a nation at a crucial moment in history.
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awful article
This is an important report on Angola’s serious efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. Clearly, the army has the national level organization as well as direct access to men that must be a part of any health campaign against sexually transmitted diseases. I can not agree with Adsads’a dismissal of this presentation and I respect Wide Angle for showing this film.
There is a problem with this – the assumption that Angola was “cut off” from other countries during the war. Not only have there been many foreigners in Angola and many Angolans traveling back and forth during the war (for example Congolese who fled to Angola, Angolans who lived in DRC and came back, the presence of foreign armies in Angola etc.) also while there was some isolation in rural areas due to mines for example, there were millions of Angolans who were internally displaced. This is not to say the work or the documentary are not of value but it is makes presumptions about what was happening in Angola during the war.