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, RH Reality Check'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.

TRAILER

PRESS

STILLS

BUY IT

CREW

FACEBOOK

OUTREACH PARTNERS

ENDORSEMENTS

DISTINCTIONS