Tonight I will be watching the oscar winning movie: The Blood of Yingzhou District. My expectation is it will be a really interesting and also sad movie to watch. Will update this post after I've seen the movie.The Blood of Yingzhou District(39 minutes) China/USA
Director: Ruby Yang
Producer: Thomas Lennon
Description:No one knows how old Gao Jun is. Four? Older? Younger? Whatever his biological age, he has none of the verbal babble, or ready tears, of a child his age. The film tracks this orphan for a year as his closest surviving kin - his uncles - weigh what to do with him. The older uncle's dilemma: if he allows his children to play with Gao Jun, who is HIV-positive, they will be ostracized by terrified neighbors. The younger uncle's dilemma: so long as Gao Jun remains in the house, the young man may not be able to find a wife. Gao Jun is one of just a handful of children we come to know in this film: Nan Nan who after her parents' death, was shunned by relatives and left to live without adult care, with "Little Flower," her teen-age sister; and the Huang siblings who vividly describe their ostracism at school. The result of misinformation about the nature of the disease, the suffering of these orphans is all the more devastating for being largely unnecessary.
Update:
Yesterday evening I watched the above mentioned movie. But before seeing this they started out with 'Julia's story' another short movie of Ruby Wang.
'Julias' story' tells the story of "Julia" a university student in mainland China, she is the first person in China who openly talks about how she contracted HIV through sexual contact.
Her foreign boyfriend has left her and later she is informed by her university that he was infected with HIV. Directly she is asked to leave the university and is not allowed to stay at the uni dorm anymore. After testing in the hospital she is also diagnosed to be HIV positive. In the beginning she really struggles a lot, even tried to commit suicide. Later on in the movie she is in contact with some HIV/AIDS organisation in China who ask her if she wants to tell her story. After she opens up she starts to have a more positive look on life, going back to university (in another city), and fortunately her new friends accept her for what she is.
'The Blood of Yingzhou District' focuses on the children of partens who got infected by the blood transfusions in China. People who would sell their blood to hospitals would have their blood extracted, then the blood of a group of 50 people would be mixed, the essential cells extracted. After this procedure they would inject the blood back so the people would recover faster and therefore quicker available again to donate again. You can imagine how quickly a virus like HIV can spread by using the above mentioned procedures..... Therefore some villages in China have extremely high HIV infection rates.
In this movie you will follow the lives of several children who lost their parents to HIV/Aids, some of them are infected themselves as well. But as the movie shows even the ones who are not infected are all threated the same way. Due to the lack of knowledge about the desease other people in the village try to ignore them as much as possible; making their lives even more tragic. Other remaining family members are faced some tough choices as taking care of these children will also put them and their family members into the same situation of being discriminated and ignored. It is a really impressive and sad movie (although surprisingly it does have some funny moments as well), definately recommend anyone to see this movie!
In both movies it becomes quite obvious that there still are a lot of people who have very little knowledge about HIV/AIDS. Because there is a big fear of being infected by being in normal contact with these people, many people tend to stay away from anyone of who they know is possibly infected. Being looked down on and being avoided by so many people makes it so much harder for them to deal with the decease they have. It is a good thing to see that HIV/AIDS organisations are doing a great job in informing people about HIV/AIDS, so hopefully these movies can soon become history as we can all threat HIV/AIDS infected people as equals.
For some reason we always tend to think that we will not be affected, But fact is their story could just as easily be yours or mine.
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