Public health advocates at the College of Charleston are hosting the Charleston premiere of deepsouth to raise awareness about the disproportionate impact of HIV among people in the American South. Co-sponsored by the Charleston Area World AIDS Day Committee, the event includes a Q&A with director and producer Lisa Biagiotti and film subject Monica Johnson. The film will be shown on December 4, 2013 in Physicians Memorial Auditorium (3 College Way) at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
deepsouth is a documentary film about the often-ignored and interconnected issues facing the rural American South. Beneath layers of history, poverty — and now soaring HIV infections — four Americans redefine traditional Southern values to create their own solutions to survive.
[Related: Read more about the film.]
At the end of 2010, 521 of every 100,000 people in Charleston County were living with HIV. This compares to 364 per 100,000 across all of South Carolina and 283 per 100,000 across the United States (based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
“HIV has an outsized – yet largely unseen – effect on Charleston. We spend a lot of time discussing HIV’s unequal effect on certain groups in the area in many of our public health classes,” says Matthew Page, Ph.D., M.P.P., assistant professor of public health at the College of Charleston. “We hope this program goes beyond our campus to promote awareness of HIV’s disproportionate impact. We want the message to reach members of the communities most adversely affected by the disease.”
[Related: Learn about the College’s public health program.]
The support of the School of Education Health and Human Performance, the Joseph P. Riley Center for Livable Communities, and the Roper St. Francis Ryan White Program, among many other co-sponsors, has been invaluable in bringing this award-winning documentary to town.
“More than 30 years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and on a day when survival is celebrated and people are dearly remembered, we seldom acknowledge that the epidemic continues to persist today,” Biagiotti said. “We are beyond HIV as solely a public health issue, but it is by no means over. deepsouth attempts to make the connections among the interlocking issues of poverty, social injustice, human rights and social determinants of health through personal stories from across the rural South.”
In the last year, deepsouth has been on a grassroots film tour, screening more than 45 times — 30 times at the invitation of communities — in local theaters, university auditoriums, government agencies, Black churches, LGBT film festivals and academic conferences.
[Related: Charleston-area HIV/AIDS resources.]
deepsouth was scheduled to be presented at The White House in October 2013, but the summit meeting on HIV and the South has been postponed due to the government shutdown. The documentary has won the SPECIAL PROGRAMMING AWARD FOR FREEDOM at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE at the Polari Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and is an OFFICIAL SELECTION for Human Rights Watch Film Festival Traveling Tour 2013-2014. (See awards list below.)
The event is sponsored by interdisciplinary departments at the College of Charleston, including: Department of Health and Human Performance, Counseling and Substance Abuse Services, Department of Communications, Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Joseph P. Riley Jr. Center for Livable Communities, Office of Institutional Diversity, Public Health Program, School of Education Health and Human Performance and School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
About Lisa Biagiotti
Lisa Biagiotti is the director and producer of deepsouth. Lisa has written and produced for the Los Angeles Times, PBS, Current TV and Human Rights Watch. Her work focuses on complex, under-reported social issues, from the sanitation crisis in South East Asia to homophobia in the Caribbean. The stories she produced on the humanitarian crisis in eastern Congo won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2009. She teaches storytelling to first-time filmmakers, and speaks internationally about digital journalism and independent filmmaking. Prior to journalism, Lisa worked in marketing and advertising for magazine publishing houses, financial services companies and nonprofit organizations. Lisa received a Fulbright grant to research Muslim immigration to Italy in 2001. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
About the College of Charleston
The College of Charleston is a public liberal arts and sciences university located in the heart of historic Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770, the College is among the nation’s top universities for quality education, student life and affordability. With more than 11,000 students, the College of Charleston offers the distinctive combination of a beautiful and historic campus, modern facilities and cutting-edge programs.
About the Charleston Area World AIDS Day Committee
The Charleston Area World AIDS Day Committee is comprised of members from all over the Charleston Area, including the Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Ryan White Program, MUSC, Lowcounty AIDS Services, and College of Charleston. The committee is happy to come together and support the World AIDS Day events in the Lowcountry to promote the community theme to SEE Zero. Stopping the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS by providing education and promoting community engagement will help us get to the international goal of zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths, and zero AIDS discrimination.
For media inquiries about deepsouth, contact Lisa Biagiotti at deepsouthfilm@gmail.com. For media inquiries about the screening at the College of Charleston, contact Matt Page at pagemj@cofc.edu or 843-953-5191.
