AIDS – yesterday, today and tomorrow

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In this episode of the KIB podcast, librarians Martin Andersson and Martin Kristenson talk to Anna Mia Ekström, Professor of Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet. We present the Face of AIDS Film Archive, which documents the global HIV epidemic 1986-2021, and discuss what is happening now in the work against HIV and AIDS.

"One thing that struck me when I recently went through clips from the archive is the amazing commitment of the activists," says Anna Mia Ekström "It was young people and people living with HIV, but also mothers, researchers, doctors, Nobel laureates, monks – everyone was involved in the fight against the virus in the 80s and 90s, they really made their voices heard. We don't see that today, it's silent – and we know that silence kills."

The Face of AIDS Film Archive consists of 700 hours of film from more than 40 countries, including finished reports and documentaries as well as unedited raw material. It traces the history of HIV and AIDS from the early years of the 1980s, when an AIDS diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence, to today's situation of effective treatment and the possibility of living a long and healthy life with HIV. The archive's website features a selection of around 300 films, which is open to all. The complete archive is available for research and teaching via login. Taken together, the archive provides a unique visual history of a global epidemic.

"It may seem obvious, but perhaps it needs to be said, that documenting this epidemic is extremely important," says leading researcher Robert Gallo in one of the archive's interviews. "Otherwise we will forget and in time have only mythology instead of truth."

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