Stephen Fry's documentary on AIDS airs Saturday, December 1st on the Sundance Channel

Stephen Fry: HIV & ME

Gay British actor Stephen Fry is probably best known for his uncanny portrayal of Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film Wilde.
Last year he made the acclaimed television documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, drawing on his own struggles with bipolar disorder. Now he’s back in reporter mode with the new documentary Stephen Fry: HIV & Me. The program premiered on the BBC in early October, and on December 1st the Sundance Channel will show it in recognition of World AIDS Day.
The only significant problem with HIV & Me is the title. It can easily be interpreted to mean that Fry is HIV positive, which he is not. This quibble aside, Fry has crafted a comprehensive and enlightening study of AIDS in the year 2007. He poses questions that have been nagging him, and then sets out to speak with a broad spectrum of people who live with the stigma of AIDS – heterosexuals, teens, hemophiliacs, gays and immigrants from Africa, to name a few. While visiting San Francisco he chats with Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin.
Fry wants to know: Why does AIDS rarely make headlines anymore, even though risky sexual behavior is on the rise? Do people realize that heterosexual sex has overcome homosexual sex as the most common route of transmission in new cases in Great Britain? Why- despite so many extraordinary innovations in medical treatment – do so many AIDS patients continue to feel ashamed and ostracized.
Fry reflects on his anxieties about getting tested in the 1980s, and the despair of seeing many of his friends die in hospitals. These tales are certainly relevant, but HIV & Me is most gripping when Fry steps aside and lets his interview subjects do the talking. In a horrifying sequence a group of young men explain the significance of “passing the gift” – an act in which an HIV negative man willingly has unsafe sex with HIV positive men.
In sub-Saharan Africa Fry explores a different kind of horror by unveiling the corruption of politicians and bureaucrats who get fat on AIDS donations and provide virtually no health care for the rapidly growing number of infected people. HIV & Me does not predict a hopeless future for Africa, however. Fry showcases several tireless individuals who educate children about AIDS and safe sex to hopefully reduce the spread of the epidemic in the future.