One of Rap-It-Up's Film Competition Winners Examines HIV/AIDS in the African-American Church

by Chael Needle

In August, the second annual Rap-It-Up/Black AIDS Short Subject Film Competition (RIU/BASS) narrowed two hundred entries down to two winning screenplays. The first, "Multitude of Mercies," debuts on BET on World AIDS Day. (The second, Michelle Lynne Coons' "Let's Talk," will be produced in time to debut on National HIV Testing Day next June.)

The response to the broadcast of last year's winning films was extremely encouraging, says BET's senior director of Public Affairs Sonya Lockett. "We've gotten a lot of requests from student groups and AIDS service organizations around the country to show the films as part of their educational work." Tapes are sent out free-of-charge upon request.

The competition, which also partnered with the YWCA and the Black AIDS Institute, is just one in a long line of innovative projects from Rap-It-Up, BET's eight-year-old corporate initiative which joins forces with the Kaiser Family Foundation to educate young adults about HIV/AIDS and STDs. Lockett says that demand has been increasing for its grass-roots community work in various cities, hosting teen forums and testing events, among other outreach efforts. No surprise, then, when a recent Kaiser survey discovered that Rap-It-Up garnered a ninety-five percent brand recognition among its target audience, and an overwhelming majority of participants said they took action--called the Rap-It-Up hotline, made a doctor's appointment, found a testing site--in response to seeing a PSA or programming on BET. She adds that the grass-roots work will likely expand throughout 2006. Though the network always recognizes significant dates on the AIDS calendar, BET will continue to integrate HIV/AIDS themes into its mainstream programming.

"Multitude" was penned by the creative forces behind the Washington, D.C.-based Straight, No Chaser Productions: Drew Anderson, Justin Follin, Charneice Fox, and Michelle Sewell. The short film examines AIDS awareness in a big-city African-American church: A young, progressive pastor calls for church leaders to start an AIDS ministry and is met with resistance and a not-in-my-backyard attitude.

Fox lauds BET's film competition  above and beyond its activist leanings, pointing out that the speed at which "Multitude" went from page to screen is a filmmaker's dream: "That opportunity...is completely amazing. We just won in August and now, in December, we're able to see the fruit of our labor."

Let's rewind to before the film's BET premiere on World AIDS Day; before the eleventh-hour touches; before Fox secured her fellow spoken-word artist and album mate, actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, to make a guest appearance; and before the cast and crew rallied together and made the characters come alive.

As they tell it, the four learned of the competition's call for submissions late in the game, but were able to hammer out the screenplay rather quickly. Their fresh experience participating in the 48 Hour Film Project--where filmmakers are given a weekend, a genre, and a prop and a line of dialogue to produce a short--undoubtedly helped the quick turnaround. The result, "Paper Trail," became an official selection at the Martha's Vineyard African-American Film Festival as well as the Tacoma Park Film Festival.

But the writing team also brought a wealth of diverse talents and experiences to the table, whether said table was at a Ruby Tuesday or at Charneice Fox's apartment, where their synergy often ferried them into the wee hours. Though all contribute to the writing process, says Alexander, each has a "unique strength": His specialty is dialogue; Fox is the Big Picture person; Sewell shines at structure, plot, and character development; and Follin is the "authenticity guru" and music supervisor. Says Fox about their ability to work well together: "What's amazing about us is that we're so different. I'm a single parent, divorced, twenty-eight-years-old; Drew is the bachelor of the crew, dates a lot of women, kind of a rapper; Michelle is thirty-seven, a lesbian; Justin is like this twenty-four-year-old meditating Kumbaya white boy. You can't get more diverse than the four of us!"

Addressing a sensitive and socially conscious subject like HIV/AIDS proved to be a good match as the first language of the group is poetry, says Sewell. "Being a poet, almost by default, puts you in an advocate space and the issues around HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, street harrassment, and [sexual orientation] are things we have tackled in our poetry. So I think that's why I felt such a natural gravitation to the subject matter. It didn't feel completely foreign."

But how to write something "culturally competent, something the average black person could relate to," as the contest guidelines suggest? The black church, notes Fox, "was the one thing that, even if they aren't real churchgoers, African-Americans could identify with."

The church was also a dramatic space where they could represent a range of ages, she adds, noting that older people especially are not often given the opportunity to reflect on AIDS. And, says Sewell, the church hadn't really been called to task on its persistent and public AIDSphobic stance. "It was surprising to us that there are churches that still do not have AIDS ministries. That blew my mind. When we first chose the church [as a subject], we thought it was going to be dated. Have churches come around? And we talked to folks [who said], Oh my God, my church is still sort of saying that [AIDS] is about gay people, that it's about dirty people, that it's about drug addicts." She takes this marginalization seriously: "Churches are huge in people's lives, not just in the black community....People look to the church to set their compass--what's right and what's wrong; where do we help and don't help; who deserves and who doesn't deserve. The church is a powerful, powerful place for them to be in." "Multitude" holds up a mirror to misinformation and mercy: What happens when you know that a "good" parishioner is HIV-positive? 

They were careful, however, not to demonize the church, or paint those within the community who resist addressing AIDS as hypocrites. Says Follin: "You have to recognize that people aren't necessarily coming from a bad place, and aren't willing to explore the issue of AIDS. They're just not necessarily comfortable." Indeed, says Sewell, they wrote it on faith "that once churches are given the information that they will do something about their current stance. Get the DVD or tape it off BET and start talking on their boards, speak to their congregations, and do the work that they are there for."

"I hope the film makes people realize that this is a real disease that touches real, everyday people," says Anderson, who, as a high school biology and health teacher, knows that young people need something concrete--not "statistics and numbers"--to hang their compassion on. That message hit home on the last day of shooting, on a basketball court in northwest D.C., when an African-American man came up to him and asked what they were up to. After Anderson explained, the forty-seven-year-old man told him his life story: HIV-positive since 1989, at one time a male prostitute and a heroin addict. "He just started crying right there, telling me his whole story. I just held this dude, who I didn't know. He told me that we were doing good work and that we should stay true and real to our message. That meant a lot because it reminded me that this is not just entertainment: This is a real issue that people are living with." 

For more information, log on to www.bet.com and www.straightnochaserfilms.com.

Chael Needle compiled A&U's Annual Holiday Gift Giving Guide for the November issue.

December 2005