Rory Kennedy: silence still equals death. Here's a director who's making a lot of noise

Interview, August, 2003 by Nadine Gordimer

Currently airing on HBO, Pandemic: Facing AiDS, a five-part documentary series directed by Rory Kennedy, tells the story of five people from five countries infected with HIV and AIDS. Using an honest style of filmmaking (also on display in her award-winning 1999 film, American Hollow, about a time-forgotten Appalachian family), she eschews the typical documentary form of interviews and archive footage thread together with voice-overs in favor of a first-person primary point of view in which the camera lives among its subjects, letting each life tell its own story. Kennedy is neither a voyeur nor a tourist: She is a witness.

Here, Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer (who contributed to a Pandemic book featuring work from 100 photographers and five authors), the renowned South African writer and activist who in recent years has turned her concerns to the AIDS crisis, talks with Kennedy-who, yes, is one of those Kennedys.

NADINE GORDIMER: And with you. Now, you've made a wonderful five-part series-a film.

RORY KENNEDY: Hello, Miss Gordimer. It's very nice to speak with you.

RK: Yes. It's a five-part series about the global AIDS pandemic.

NG: This is so essential. I'm very glad to hear you ye done it.

RK: We've been working on it for the past year and a half or so, and it's been a really amazing project. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get to South Africa, but we did film in Uganda.

NG: Oh, well, it's a great pity. I was, last night, with a very remarkable man who is leading one of the campaigns in South Africa-and that's Judge Edwin Cameron. You may have heard of him.

BK: Yes, I have.

NG: He had done something wonderful about a year ago when there was a big exhibition of photographs of how people lived with the problem of having AIDS and being HIV-positive. He had gathered around him people--sometimes very poor people--who have the same disease, and he said, "I'm a judge. I can afford to buy the drugs I need to keep me comparatively healthy, but these people standing around me, they cannot." I thought this was wonderful.

RK: One of the things we've found in traveling to different parts of the world to make this movie is how important it is for politicians and judges, legislators and policy makers to really speak out about HIV and AIDS, particularly those people who are HIV-positive. And it's such a tragedy that we have AIDS drugs--you know, part of the solution to this crisis-and yet they're not getting to so many people around the world.

NG: No. And one's very puzzled about the reasons. It seems to me that the recipes, so to say, for these drugs should not be regarded as intellectual properties to belong to any firm or country. It seems to me AIDS is a crisis of world proportions, and that all information, all possibilities should be open to everybody. I'm sure you agree.

RK: I do. Absolutely. In addition to Uganda, another place we filmed in was Brazil. I don't know if you're familiar with their policies, but they have a very progressive stance on AIDS and have made drugs available to everybody who needs them.

NG: And they are not a terribly rich country. It's remarkable.

RK: I think that's an important lesson: If a country like Brazil can make the drugs available to every person who needs them, then every country should be able to. We just need to make it a priority.

NG: Absolutely. It's of great distress to me that in my own country... [pauses) I've great admiration for our president, Thabo Mbeki. He has done extremely well in very difficult decisions, but I cannot understand his turning away from the great problem of AIDS.

RK: I know. It is such a tragedy. I think that South Africa has the largest number of HIV-positive cases in the world.

NG: Yes, and that's why I can't understand why you didn't come here!

RK: [laughs] Well, I'll tell you, we really thought about it The reason we didn't is because we wanted some amount of hope in this documentary. In Uganda, they at one point had a rate of infection of 28 percent, and that has now come down to 5 percent! And this is a country that is very poor, that doesn't have much of a healthcare infrastructure, and that has had a lot of political strife--and yet they have made AIDS a priority, and they have really helped stem the tide.

NG: That's true. And, I think, for us to know how Uganda, with limited resources, managed it is very important. We need to have that information.

RK: Well, that's why we did it. You know, the film is going to air [in the U.S.] on HBO, but we are hoping to get the project out to other countries, including South Africa.

NG: Oh, I hope so. Now, tell me what countries you covered. Brazil, Uganda...

RK: Brazil, Uganda, India, Thailand, and Russia. We focus on five characters, one from each country. One of the reasons I became interested in this issue is, a number of years ago I joined a White House delegation to Africa to look at the AIDS crisis, and I was so moved by what I saw. I think anyone who has experienced the problem firsthand cannot not jump into the battle. I felt that the rest of the world had so much to learn from what's happening in Africa.