In many African countries, HIV/AIDS is called "Slim". In this 28-minute documentary film, seven African children, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old, talk about what it's like to be HIV positive. Of the seven children, four are girls and three are boys. Three of the children have lost both parents to AIDS and three have lost one parent.

In the film, the children discuss how old they were when they found out they were HIV positive, how they felt when they first learned they were infected, how they are treated at home and at school, and how the illness affects their daily lives. They also talk about their dreams for the future, and the career paths they hope to follow some day. Their answers to this question often reflect the way they have been treated by society.
 
DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
 
I am a professor of film at Boston University. In 2004, I traveled to Uganda as a Fulbright Scholar, to make this film and to teach video production at Makerere University in Kampala. Going there, I knew that HIV/AIDS is a huge problem in Africa and that the number of children in Africa who are "living with slim," is staggering,

I had seen or heard about many films and press stories dealing with HIV/AIDS, but they were almost all about adults with HIV/AIDS. What was missing was a film about HIV positive children that allowed the children themselves to speak about the disease.

So I set out to find children who were HIV positive who would agree to be filmed. I realized that one of the most important steps was to come up with the questions I would ask. To get ideas, I read letters written by HIV positive children to their HIV/AIDS counselors, in which they wrote about what was going on in their lives. I then turned the issues the children most cared about into questions.

One of the key counselors was Esther Kangave at Mulago Hospital's Infectious Diseases Clinic (IDC) in Kampala, Uganda. She works with HIV positive children every day and understands their problems, so I asked her to help me produce the film and conduct the interviews. When the interviews were nearly completed, Esther had to leave Africa for a training program in the U.K., so I used several other counselors to conduct the remaining interviews.

I interviewed 27 children in total. I asked all of them the same questions. From the 27 children, I chose the seven who are in the final film. All the children were excellent, but some were more vocal than others, and I also wanted to balance issues of age, gender, rural, urban, etc.

I shot the film myself and recorded the sound as well. Because of the sensitive nature of the film, and the age of the children, I decided not to use a production crew. I wanted to limit the number of people involved and thus eliminate many distractions.

Recently, PSI-Uganda, a USAID-funded program fighting HIV/AIDS in Uganda, teamed with the Ugandan Ministry of Health to purchase 350 copies of "Living with Slim" for use in antenatal clinics to motivate pregnant women to seek counseling and testing.

"Living with Slim" had its world premier at Uganda's National Theatre on May 23, 2004.