RH Reality Interview: Feminist Filmmaker Tackles HIV Epidemic Among Black Women

Emily Abt, director of the documentary "All of Us," talks to Rewire's Sarah Seltzer about the HIV epidemic among black women, gender inequality and what men will get out of the film.


Emily Abt, a feminist filmmaker, and Mehret Mandefro, studying to be
a doctor, met in London when they were both on Fulbright scholarships.
Emily later turned to Mehret and two of her HIV-positive patients–Chevelle
and Tara–to star in a documentary film about the
epidemic of AIDS among African
American women
. All of
the women involved in the film realized that cultural and social misogyny
takes a personal toll, and that regardless of their background, women
who have internalized sexist beliefs are in danger of being ill-equipped
to protect themselves from the disease. After hearing Chevelle introduce
a ten minute trailer of the film at a downtown reading last month, Rewire’s Sarah Seltzer
called Emily, who’s already busy on her next feature film, to talk about
the lessons she learned making "
All of Us."

SS: After working on a series of films with feminist themes,
what made you want to tackle HIV as your next topic?


EA: I’m very much of a feminist filmmaker! That word sometimes gets dropped
in press coverage, but I wear that title proudly. What inspired me is
that Mehret and I found more similarities than you might think between
our own behavior, our peers’ behavior and the behavior of women who
were becoming infected. The
film is about women’s risky behavior in the bedroom and the social forces
that often create that, or are behind that.

SS: So you believe giving women power is crucial to stopping
the spread of disease?


EA: Absolutely, examining gender inequity as it plays out in the bedroom
and looking at issues of love, trust, intimacy and how those can be
factors in the spread of this disease.

SS: I know you mention abstinence-only policies in the
film. Do you think the spread of HIV among young black women can partially
be explained by a lack of comprehensive sex ed?


EA: Definitely. We end this film with a scene where Mehret and Chenelle
go to Brooklyn to talk to teenage girls. The fact that there is no decent
national sex ed totally inspired me, the side effects from Bush’s approach
to abstinence-only stuff. The film is very much a rallying cry for better
sexual health education and outreach.

SS: You call the completed film the "emergency edition."

EA: Yeah absolutely. HIV is the biggest cause of death for African-American
women ages 18-35. It’s unnacceptable that this
statistic doesn’t merit more public outcry and attention.
When making the film we kept thinking that we’d get scooped, that other
filmmakers and journalists would get the word out. We kept expecting
the New York Times Magazine would do a cover story. That never happened, and
it still hasn’t happened, even though it has taken us four years to make the film. It’s
kind of sad.

My last film was about the human impact of welfare reform. That
film did very well. Meanwhile, "All of Us" hasn’t gotten picked up by a
network. We’re going to see it through, we’re going to do a theatrical
release in September.

SS: Did the hoopla surrounding race vs. gender in the election frustrate
you as you saw that this problem, facing African-American women, was totally ignored during the debates?


EA: The media in general want to simplify things, we get these kind of dichotomies.
This film is specifically about the disproportionate risk that black women
face, but there’s more here. It relates to all women.

SS: The film was originally titled Mehret. Why did you change
it to "All of Us"? How does that parallel journey of the
film?


EA: We had to make sure that audience members didn’t walk away thinking
it wasn’t about them, that it was just about people who were already
at risk. The two patients in the film had faced a lot of abuse and domestic
violence and drug abuse. It was important to us to also look at Mehret’s
personal life, given that she’s Harvard-educated, promoting the film
in a way that demonstrated its universal issues.

SS: What influenced the decision to go to Ethiopia and
look at HIV there as part of the filming?


EA: That was a perk of having Mehret as a subject. She was Ethiopian and
had always returned there, and she has a commitment to doing HIV related
work in Africa. There were real parallels between what’s happening to
women there and here and in the inner city. It’s not the same, but there
were more parellels than you would think.

SS: What was it like working with the women in the film
on a daily basis?

EA: Sometimes it was difficult. I definitely cried a bit and asked a lot
of personal questions. Sometimes they didn’t like that.

SS: You filmed some happy, almost fairy-tale moments,
like Chevelle’s wedding.


EA: It was very important to show both the joy and pain in subjects. Like
Chevelle always says, there is life after HIV. You can live with
the virus, and it’s not necessarily a death sentence.

SS: Since Mehret is training to be a doctor and the film
shows her interacting with her patients, do you think the film might
be used in the medical field?


EA: Yes. We’re doing really well with educational sales, and some of the
institutes that have purchased it are med schools. I definitely think
some people think it should be used in medical school curricula and the like.
It could change the nature of how doctors interact with HIV patients
because it’s different from normal relationships. Doctors know their patients for years and see them
so often.

SS: What will men get out of the film?

EA: One of the main messages of the film is to be sexually responsible.
There are real costs and on the one side you have the abstinence only
movement not explaining things. But on the other side, there’s a difference
between being sexually independent and sexually irresponsible and that’s
an important message for men too. I didn’t get as much access with men
in these women’s lives as I wanted. It speaks to how taboo the subject
is. People aren’t comfortable — it’s challenging to get people
to talk about sex in a real way, not just a sexy fun way.