|
|
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||
  |
 |
||||||||||
|
|
   |
|
|
   |
||||
|
Personal look at AIDS in film The Mercury News |
||||
|
The day Steve Anguis died from AIDS complications at age 32, his father started work on a documentary to honor him. Fifteen years later, ``The Los Altos Story'' has given millions of viewers a personal look at how AIDS affected the Anguis family and others in the small Peninsula town. The 30-minute film, an unlikely production of the Los Altos Rotary Club, has won numerous awards and been translated into six languages. This month, the Los Altos club honored member Dushan ``Dude'' Anguis for carrying on the film's message and his son's legacy. There's still rarely a dry eye when people watch the video, which airs next month on public television. But initially, audience members appeared hesitant to ask Anguis too many personal questions, he said. ``In 1989, it wasn't the neatest thing in the world to say you have a gay son dying from AIDS,'' he said. ``The thing I find different now, largely due to our project, is more of a willingness for Rotarians and others to discuss the AIDS epidemic.'' Worldwide, 39.4 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in 2004 while another 3.1 million died from the affliction, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations agency that tracks the virus. When Anguis approached the Los Altos club about doing an educational video on AIDS, his son Steve, a successful art director in New York, had just told the family he was dying of the virus. Anguis wanted to inform and educate Rotarians across the world. In the beginning, some members thought promoting AIDS awareness and education might be too political. But they changed their minds when they learned that members Greg Betts and Walter Singer also were HIV-positive. In the film, Singer, a man so well known in the community he was called ``Mr. Los Altos,'' stands before the club and asks them to be his support group. Singer, who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion, died in 1992 at age 68. Betts is still living. The video, which won the George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award -- radio and television's equivalent of a Pulitzer -- is being rebroadcast on public access channels in the Bay Area throughout this month and January. Many credit its success to the simple, heartfelt story of a Rotary Club that realized they were not immune to a virus that seemed so far away. ``As a family, we just felt we had to do something because there's no way we could see Steve dying of this and that's the end of that,'' Anguis said in the film. At first, it was hard to show a video with his beloved son appearing so fragile. Anguis would force himself to think of something more pleasant -- like football -- when the scenes of Steve appeared. Now he no longer has to mentally block out certain parts. ``I feel much comfort and satisfaction that the message is getting through,'' he said. Years after the film received nationwide acclaim, requests for copies still pour in. Anguis, a retired school superintendent, keeps track of requests, fills orders and mails out the video, now in DVD format. He receives about a dozen requests a month. It's common to create something such as a book, poem or video when one is touched by something like AIDS, said Redge Norton, a spokesman for the San Francisco AIDS foundation. It's cathartic for people and groups to create a work as a means to express their feelings and do something positive. ``If you can identify with the story, you're open to the message,'' Norton said. More than a decade later, Anguis is still pushing his message. ``That's a long time to have that kind of fire,'' said Mary Prochnow, a Rotary club member who helped with the film. ``When we started, there was no way any of us could have guessed the power of it and its life.'' In the tribute to Anguis' efforts this month, club member Jean Newton recalled the moment in 1989 when he stood in front of the club and set the film into motion. ``It was a simple request,'' she said. ``Let's do something.'' |
||||
|
|
||||
 |
||||
 |
Search | Mailing List | Contact Us | Job Listings | Trauma Links | Privacy Statement | Site Credits
|
