TV Reviews : AIDS Films on Target With Facts and More Facts

As the culmination of “AIDS Awareness Week” on KCET Channel 28, three new informational films on various aspects of the epidemic will air Sunday afternoon (along with three others shown previously). Brimming with facts, they squarely hit their target audiences: the African-American community, American Indians and workers.

“AIDS in the Black Community” (at 2 p.m.) methodically explores the disease’s very complex effect on a people already suffering from high rates of other sexually transmitted diseases. Narrator-reporter Paul Berry speaks directly to blacks as he inquires on the syndrome of macho denial of bisexual and homosexual behavior as well as the uphill battle to educate intravenous drug users in the ghetto. Pediatrician Mark Wade then leads a compelling workshop with teens, forcing them to confront the fact that having sex without condoms is like playing Russian roulette.

As another in a spate of recent documentaries that break down the stereotypical depiction of AIDS victims, “Her Giveaway: A Spiritual Journey with AIDS” (at 3 p.m.) nicely succeeds in its portrayal of Carole Lafavor, a bright, rural American Indian. Ironically, in trying to escape the worst Indian epidemic--alcoholism--Lafavor ended up taking drugs that led to an AIDS infection. But the film is also about the deep roots of native spirituality: Lafavor’s kindly medicine man explains the thought and process behind his so-far-successful healing treatments, and Lafavor concludes with the thought that “nature is what sustains us . . . our enemies are ignorance and hysteria.”

Produced by Pacific Bell, “An Epidemic of Fear: AIDS in the Workplace” (at 5 p.m.) suffers from a stultifying style common in corporate-made films. Despite this, the half-hour piece so thoroughly and succinctly dismisses every myth about AIDS infection that it should become standard viewing for any company’s managers and employees. Besides explaining how one can’t get AIDS (saliva, mosquitoes, food, public places), writer-director Michael Danty’s report also observes how some infected workers have survived while being socially shunned, and how courts are determining that AIDS is a disability, thus opening the way for insurance benefits.