E-Mail This Article to a Friend STATE OF DENIAL

The past 10 years have seen the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and slow progress in fighting widespread poverty. But this period has also seen the rate of HIV infection rise from one to 20 percent of the population. Instead of coming to terms with the epidemic, the ruling African National Congress party has adopted pseudo-Marxist language to suggest that AIDS is caused by poverty rather than HIV; President Thabo Mbeki has even claimed that anti-AIDS drugs are more dangerous than the disease itself. Set against the backdrop of this institutional intransigence, director Elaine Epstein’s State of Denial, a selection in the Harvard Film Archive’s "Ten Years After: Contemporary South African Cinema" series, profiles activists, doctors, and a number of families confronting HIV and AIDS. Her excellent documentary is a moving account of a society under attack from within and a scathing exposé of the complicity of the government and the pharmaceutical industry in this crisis. (86 minutes)