Wazi: Strength in Unity
With approximately 1.3 million cases of HIV and AIDS in Tanzania, the issue is a serious health concern. With 1 physician per 20,511 people, life expectancy is 51 years for men and 53 for women and still far less for those livig with the virus. In sub-Saharan regions 1 in 4 young adults carry HIV with 16,000 new infections being acquired everyday. From the beginning of the epidemic until the start of 1998, some 8.2 million children around the world lost their mothers to AIDS. In 1997, it is estimated that HIV and AIDS has orphaned 1.6 million children. At present, 90 percent of the orphans live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Although Tanzania is fortunate to be climbing above the continent’s worst infection and death statistics, the social effects of the virus are not improving. Despite national efforts to educate and encourage testing, reality for those infected is one of struggle and hardship. Treated as pariahs in their own villages by those as close as their own families, there is little hope for the outcast that battles alone.
In the rural jungles of the Rombo District in Northern Tanzania, these outcasts have banded together to stand against the opposition. Held accountable to each other, it is in their numbers and their unity that they discover their greatest power.
”Wazi” explores the daily joys and trials of those living in the HIV positive group in a remote mountain village. It is a story about people who depend on each other and their group for their sanity, their health and ultimately their survival. “Wazi” intimately reveals a handful of characters who’s struggle and who’s strength prove to be not so different than those of suffering people everywhere else in the the world.
Still in post-production, this is a short trailer for what will be a 60 to 90 minute full length documentary film.
Urban Decay: A Corroding South Central Los Angeles
With hopes to blur collective memories of violence and blight, South Central Los Angeles was official changed to South Los Angeles in 2003. South Central had become synonymous with poverty, violence, unemployment, drugs, and gangs. South Central had become a byword for urban decay.
In the heyday of public housing construction during the 1940s and 1950s, a singular architectural vision swept the country. Sought to house as many people as possible in one spot, vertical warehouses were constructed, stacking residences row upon row. South Los Angeles was the only district-scale area within the city in which African-Americans could purchase property prior to 1948. Pueblo del Rio became the first public housing project to accept African American residents.
With the increase of Hispanic immigrants arriving in South Los Angeles, the tension between Black and Latino gangs have led to increased racially-motivated violence. Latin American immigrants are continuing to become the majority.