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AFI Presents The Other Side of AIDS

Filmmaker Robin Scovill's The Other Side of AIDS, running at this year's AFI Film Fest, sheds a new light on the facts behind the HIV virus and AIDS.
By Mark Umbach

As the 2004 American Film Institute Film Fest opens, organizers are preparing for a full line-up of features, documentaries and shorts from emerging filmmakers from around the globe. Now in its 18th year, for the first time the AFI Fest will also be running concurrently with the American Film Market, combining commerce and culture, to present in a unified market and festival.

One of the more intriguing documentaries entered in this year's fest is Robin Scovill's The Other Side of AIDS, which takes a critical look at the diagnosis and treatment of those who have tested positive for the HIV virus. Over the course of 20 years, the government has spent more that $150 billion on AIDS research, yet no scientist can exactly explain how the HIV virus causes AIDS or provide a widely accepted explanation for the development of the disease.
 
"Doctors, scientists and HIV positives who challenge conventional thinking about AIDS have been attacked in the media and ostracized by their peers," explained Scovill during a recent interview with FilmStew. "The grants lost, labs closed, papers rejected, and names called stand as a kind of warning that scientific debate on the subject is considered closed and that questioning AIDS is not welcome, and even punishable."

Currently, scientists still do not have a test that zeroes in on the HIV virus; the test simply tests for an anti-body that's present to fight off the virus. According to the film, none of the 30 or so HIV tests currently in use are able to find the actual virus, and none are approved by the FDA for the specific intended purpose of diagnosing HIV infection.

Director Scovill, whose wife Christine Maggiore has tested positive for HIV, challenged these assertions and brought his findings to film. Maggiore was diagnosed in 1992 and has been living for 12 years without meds and has given birth to two healthy children, which she had with Scovill.

"When I tested HIV positive in 1992, conventional wisdom was that you waited to become ill before taking the drugs," she explains. "Because my T cell counts always put me in the category of healthy, none of the many doctors I saw ever recommended I start treatment."

"As my knowledge and experience grew, so did my conviction that the pharmaceutical approach was not for me," adds Maggiore, who believes patients should take a more proactive stance in their own treatment. "Although I feel very strongly that everyone needs to make up their own mind about treatment, I also feel it's important for people to know that there are no published studies comparing the outcomes of HIV positives taking the drugs with those who don't, as well as no long-term studies in the mainstream medical literature that demonstrate the drugs' ability to promote health or prolong life."

Through interviews with scientists on both sides of the spectrum, Scovill hopes to shine new light, or at least other points of view, on the facts that surround the HIV virus and AIDS. It wasn't an easy task, however. "Christine introduced me to a number of people that appear in the film and several of those put me in touch with their friends and colleagues," Scovill asserts. "I found the mainstream AIDS spokespersons by cold calling various AIDS organizations and clinics but lost many potential interviews when I explained the premise of my film."

"It was very difficult to find AIDS experts willing to answer probing questions about HIV," explained Scovill.

In the end, both Scovill and Maggiore hope their film will help open people's mind to new ways of thinking about both the HIV virus and AIDS. According to Scovill, "There are valid, vital reasons to apply some healthy skepticism to what we have been taught about HIV and AIDS; there is much more hope and possibility than what we are currently told."
This year's AFI Film Fest runs from November 4-14.

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