Love – Stories in a time of HIV & AIDS, will tug at your heart strings and stir up your emotions. It will get you thinking and talking about who and how you love.

This series of 10 short films for television from 10 countries in southern Africa, explore the many facets of love.

It has already begun to broadcast in Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and will broadcast in South Africa starting on Wednesdays from 17 March 2010 on SABC1 at 20h30.

About the films

Each half hour film depicts a slice of life. The stories speak of love and desire, secrets and lies in a time of HIV & AIDS.

The series is rooted in rich research, and forms part of OneLove, the largest cross border HIV prevention campaign in the region which is tackling head on the issue of multiple concurrent partners.

Love – Stories in a time of HIV & AIDS builds on the success of the Untold television Series.

Harriet Perlman, head of the Soul City Regional Programme explains: ‘Untold – stories in a time of HIV & AIDS, was our first regional film series for TV, which brought together stories from 9 southern African countries.

It was broadcast on public television in 2009 across nine countries in the region and research showed that the series was hugely successful. Audiences from across Southern Africa identified with the films.

The Untold series, developed in collaboration with Curious Pictures, also saw new and exciting talent emerge, both in front of and behind the camera.

Many were first timers, who were part of our large -scale capacity building programme. Untold was internationally recognised and shown at film festivals in both Europe and America. ‘

Building film-making skills in the region

Love – Stories in a time of HIV & AIDS, is also the culmination of an ambitious capacity building programme, in which 120 people: writers, producers, technical crew and directors from 10 countries (with Tanzania coming on board) were trained and mentored in the development and production of effective and entertaining drama.

Training happened both in workshops and on location.

Perlman explains; ‘In collaboration with Curious Pictures, an intensive training programme was devised drawing on the skills and support from some of the best people in the industry.’ Yula Quinn, series producer says the intention of the capacity building programme was to ‘ transfer skills and enhance the film- makers abilities from script writing through to post -production, in a practical way.

Learners were supported and mentored on pre- production, during filming and in post- production by leading industry experts.

After the filmmakers had done a rough cut in their own country, they were taken through the process of final editing in South Africa.

These Love stories, showcase films from Swaziland, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Namibia. All films have English subtitles.

The series is sponsored by BP and DFID.

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